TOWARDS 
THE GOAL 






MRS. HUMPHRY WARD 




Class 

Book _. 



10 



GopightN 



CDEHRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Towards the Goal 



Towards the Goal 



By 
Mrs. Humphry Ward 

Author of " England's Effort " 



With a Preface by 
Theodore Roosevelt 



New York 

Charles Scribner's Sons 

1917 



2640 
.W34 



Copyright, 1917, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



Published August, 1917 



AUG i-6 1317 




US' 

IA473141 



TO 

ANDRE CHEVRILLON 

TRUE SON OF FRANCE 
TRUE FRIEND OF ENGLAND 
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK 



PREFACE 

England has in this war reached a height of achieve- 
ment loftier than that which she attained in the strug- 
gle with Napoleon; and she has reached that height 
in a far shorter period. Her giant effort, crowned with 
a success as wonderful as the effort itself, is worthily 
described by the woman who has influenced all those 
who speak and read English more profoundly than 
any other woman now alive. No other writer could 
describe England's effort with such knowledge, power 
and interest. Mrs. Ward writes nobly on a noble 
theme. 

This war is the greatest the world has ever seen. 
The vast size of the armies, the tremendous slaughter, 
the loftiness of the heroism shown and the hideous 
horror of the brutalities committed, the valor of the 
fighting men and the extraordinary ingenuity of those 
who have designed and built the fighting machines, 
the burning patriotism of the peoples who defend 

their hearthstones and the far-reaching complexity of 

vii 



viii PREFACE 

the plans of the leaders — all are on a scale so huge that 
nothing in past history can be compared with them. 

The issues at stake are elemental. The free peoples 
of the world have banded together against tyrannous 
militarism and government by caste. It is not too 
much to say that the outcome will largely determine, 
for daring and liberty-loving souls, whether or not life 
is worth living. A Prussianized world would be as 
intolerable as a world ruled over by Attila or by Timur 
the Lame. 

It is in this immense world crisis that England has 
played her part; a part which has grown greater month 
by month. Mrs. Ward enables us to see the awaken- 
ing of the national soul which rendered it possible to 
play this part; and she describes the works by which 
the faith of the soul justified itself. 

What she writes is of peculiar interest to the United 
States. We have suffered, or are suffering, in exagger- 
ated form, from most (not all) of the evils that were 
eating into the fibre of the British character three years 
ago — and in addition from some purely indigenous ills 
of our own. If we are to cure ourselves, it must be 
by our own exertions; our destiny will certainly not be 
shaped for us, as was Germany's, by a few towering 



PREFACE ix 

autocrats of genius, such as Bismarck and Moltke. 
Mrs. Ward shows us the people of England in the act 
of curing their own ills, of making good, by gigantic 
and self-sacrificing exertion in the present, the folly 
and selfishness and greed and soft slackness of the past. 
The fact that England, when on the brink of destruc- 
tion, gathered her strength and strode resolutely back 
to safety, is a fact of happy omen for us in America, 
who are now just awaking to the folly and selfishness 
and greed and soft slackness that for some years we 
have been showing. 

As in America, so in England, a surfeit of material- 
ism had produced a lack of high spiritual purpose in 
the nation at large; there was much confusion of ideas 
and ideals; and also much triviality, which was espe- 
cially offensive when it masqueraded under some high- 
sounding name. An unhealthy sentimentality — the an- 
tithesis of morality — had gone hand in hand with a 
peculiarly sordid and repulsive materialism. The re- 
sult was a soil in which various noxious weeds flourished 
rankly; and of these the most noxious was professional 
pacifism. The professional pacifist has festered in the 
diseased tissue of almost every civilization; but it is 
only within the last three-quarters of a century that he 



x PREFACE 

has been a serious menace to the peace of justice and 
righteousness. In consequence, decent citizens are only 
beginning to appreciate the base immorality of his 
preaching and practice; and he has been given entirely 
undeserved credit for good intentions. 

In England, as in the United States, domestic paci- 
fism has been the most potent ally of alien militarism. 
At first, this service was rendered without pay. The 
silly creatures of both sexes, who composed the ma- 
jority of the leaders in the professional pacifist move- 
ment, were actuated by sheer timidity, or by an uneasy 
thirst for self-advertisement or by sheer puzzle-headed- 
ness. But gradually these dupes fell under the sway 
of more sinister and more powerful intellects. In both 
England and the United States, of recent years, some 
of the Pacifist leaders have been such merely because 
their predominant characteristic could not be brayed 
out of them with a mortar; but others were hired by 
Germany. In the United States, pro-Germanism (which 
is merely another name for one form of anti-Ameri- 
canism) has been the main prop of the pacifist agita- 
tion for nearly three years. In England, as the re- 
searches of Miss Boyle O'Reilly have shown, German 
influence is the central and guiding feature of every 



PREFACE xi 

important pacifist association. In both countries, pro- 
fessional pacifism, of the ultra type, has shown itself 
profoundly unpatriotic. The damage it has done the 
nation has been limited only by its weakness and folly; 
those, who have professed it, have served the devil to 
the full extent which their limited powers permitted. 

There were in England — just as there are now in 
America — even worse foes to national honor and effi- 
ciency. Greed and selfishness, among capitalists and 
among labor leaders, had to be grappled with. The 
sordid baseness which saw in the war only a chance 
for additional money profits to the employer, was al- 
most matched by the fierce selfishness which refused 
to consider a strike from any but the standpoint of the 
strikers. 

But the chief obstacles to be encountered in rousing 
England were sheer shortsightedness and that apathetic 
indifference which springs from dullness of apprehen- 
sion. A considerable time elapsed before it was possi- 
ble to make the people understand that this was a peo- 
ple's war, that it was a matter of vital personal concern 
to the people as a whole, and to all individuals as indi- 
viduals. In America, we are now encountering much 
the same difficulty, due to much the same causes. 



xii PREFACE 

In England, the most essential thing to be done was 
to wake the people to their need, and to guide them 
in meeting the need. The next most essential was to 
show to them and to the peoples in friendly lands, 
whether allied or neutral, how the task was done; 
and this, both as a reason for just pride in what had 
been achieved and as an inspiration to further effort. 

Mrs. Ward accomplishes both purposes. Every 
American who reads the present volume must feel a 
hearty and profound respect for the patriotism, energy, 
and efficiency shown by the British people when they 
became awake to the nature of the crisis; and further- 
more, every American must feel stirred with the desire 
to see his country now emulate Britain's achievement. 

In this volume, Mrs. Ward draws a wonderful pic- 
ture of the English in the full tide of their successful 
effort. From the beginning, England's naval effort 
and her money effort have been extraordinary. By 
the time Mrs. Ward's first book was written, the work 
of industrial preparedness was in full blast; but it 
could not yet be said that England's army in the field 
was the equal of the huge, carefully prepared, thor- 
oughly co-ordinated, military machines of those against 
whom and beside whom it fought. Now, the English 



PREFACE xiii 

army is itself as fine and as highly efficient a military 
machine as the wisdom of man can devise; now, the 
valor and hardihood of the individual soldier are being 
utilized to the full under a vast and perfected system 
which enables those in control of the great engine to 
use every unit in such fashion as to aid in driving the 
mass forward to victory. 

Even the Napoleonic contest was child's play com- 
pared to this. Never has Great Britain been put to 
such a test. Never since the spacious days of Eliza- 
beth has she been in such danger. Never, in any 
crisis, has she risen to so lofty a height of self-sacrifice 
and achievement. In the giant struggle against Na- 
poleon, England's own safety was secured by the de- 
moralization of the French fleet. But, in this contest, 
the German naval authorities have at their disposal 
a fleet of extraordinary efficiency, and have devised 
for use on an extended scale the most formidable and 
destructive of all instruments of marine warfare. In 
previous coalitions, England has partially financed her 
continental allies; in this case, the expenditures have 
been on an unheard-of scale, and, in consequence, Eng- 
land's active, industrial strength, in men and money, 
in business and mercantile and agricultural ability, 



xiv PREFACE 

has been drawn on as never before. As in the days of 
Marlboro and Wellington, so now England has sent 
her troops to the continent; but whereas formerly 
her expeditionary forces, altho of excellent quality, 
were numerically too small to be of primary impor- 
tance, at present her army is already, by size as well as 
by excellence, a factor of prime importance in the 
military situation; and its relative as well as absolute 
importance is steadily growing. 

Mrs. Ward's volume is of high value as a study of 
contemporary history. It is of at least as high value as 
an inspiration to constructive patriotism. 

Theodore Roosevelt. 

Sagamore Hill, May 1st, 1917. 



CONTENTS 



England's Effort— Rapid March of Events— The Work of 
the Navy — A Naval Base — What the Navy has done— 
The Jutland Battle — The Submarine Peril — German Lies 
— Shipbuilding — Disciplined Expectancy — Crossing the 
Channel — The Minister of Munitions — Dr. Addison — In- 
crease of Munitions — A Gigantic Task — Arrival in France 
— German Prisoners — A Fat Factory — A Use for Every- 
thing — G.H.Q. — Intelligence Department — "The Issue of 
the War" — An Aerodrome — The Task of the Aviators — 
The Visitors' Chateau pp. 3-26 

II 

A French School — Our Soldiers and French Children — Nissen 
Huts — Tanks — A Primeval Plough — A Division on the 
March — Significant Preparations — Increase of Ammunition 
"The Fosses" — A Sacred Spot — Vimy Ridge — The Sound 
of the Guns — A Talk with a General — Why the Germans 
Retreat — Growth of the New Armies — Soldiers at School 

pp. 27-44 

III 

America Joins the Allies — The British Effort — Creating an 
Army — JJ Union SacrSe — Registration — Accommodation — 
Clothing — Arms and Equipment — A Critical Time — A 
Long-continued Strain — Training — O.T.C.'S — Boy Officers 
— The First Three Armies — Our Wonderful Soldiers — An 
Advanced Stage — The Final Result — Spectacle of the 
Present — Snipers and Anti-snipers — The Result pp. 45-65 



xvi CONTENTS 



IV 



Vimy Ridge — Morale of Our Men — Mons. le Maire — The 
Somme — German Letters — German Prisoners — Amiens — 
"Taking Over" a Line — Poilus and Tommies — "Taking 
Over" Trenches — French Trenches — Unnoticed Changes 
— Amiens Cathedral — German Prisoners — Confidence 

pp. 66-83 



German Fictions — Winter Preparation — Albert — La Boisselle 
and Ovillers — In the Track of War — Regained Ground — 
Enemy Preparations — German Dug-outs — "There were 
no Stragglers " — Contalmaison — Devastation — Retreating 
Germans — Death, Victory, Work — Work of the R.E. — A 
Parachute — Approaching Victory .... pp. 84-99 



VI 

German Retreat — Enemy Losses — Need of Artillery — Await- 
ing the Issue — Herr Zimmerman — Training — A National 
Idea — Training — Fighting for Peace — Stubbornness and 
Discipline — Training of Officers — Responsibility — The Brit- 
ish Soldier — Soldiers' Humour — A Boy Hero — "They have 
done their job" — Casualties — Reconnaissance — Air Fight- 
ing — Use of Aeroplanes — Terms of Peace . pp. 100-119 



VII 

Among the French — German Barbarities — Beauty of France 
— French Families — Paris — To Senlis — Senlis — The Cure of 
Senlis — The German Occupation — August 30th, 1914 — ■ 
Germans in Senlis — German Brutality — A Savage Revenge 
— A Burning City — Murder of the Mayor — The Cure in 
the Cathedral — The Abbe's Narrative — False Charges — 
Wanton Destruction — A Sudden Change — Return of the 
French — Scenes of Battle — Vareddes . . pp. 120-144 



CONTENTS xvii 



VIII 

Battle of the Ourcq — Von Kluck's Mistake — Anniversary o_ 
the Battle — Wreckage of War — A Burying Party — A 
Funeral — A Five Days' Battle — Life-and-Death Fighting 
— "Salut au Drapeau" — Meaux — Vareddes — Murders at 
Vareddes — Von Kluck's Approach — The Turn of the Tide 
— The Old Cure — German Brutalities — Torturers — The 
Cure's Sufferings — "He is a Spy" — A Weary March — 
Outrages — Victims — Reparation — To Lorraine 

pp. 145-169 

IX 

fipernay-Chalons — Snow — Nancy — The French People — 
L 'Union SacrSe — France and England — Nancy — Hill of 
Leomont — The Grand Couronne — The Lorraine Campaign 
— Taubes — Vitrimont — Miss Polk — A Restored Church — 
Society of Friends — Gerbeviller — Sceur Julie — Mortagne — 
An Inexpiable Crime — Massacre of Gerbeviller — "Les 
Civils ont Tire" — Sceur Julie — The Germans come — Ger- 
man Wounded — Barbarities in Hospital — Sceur Julie and 
Germans — The French Return — Germans at Nancy — 
Nancy saved — A Warm Welcome — Adieu to Lorraine 

pp. 170-200 



Doctrine of Force — Disciplined Cruelty — German Professors 
— Professor von Gierke — An Orgy of Crime — Return Home 
— Russia — The Revolution — Liberty like Young Wine — 
What will Russia do ? — America joins — America and France 
— The Italians — The Battle of Messines — Europe and 
America pp. 201-231 



Towards the Goal 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 

I 

March 24th, 1917. 

Dear Mr. Roosevelt, 

It may be now frankly confessed that it was 
you who gave the impulse last year, which 
led to the writing of the first series of Letters 
on England's Effort in the war, which were 
published in book form in June, 1916. Your 
appeal found me in our quiet country house, 
busy with quite other work, and at first I 
thought it impossible that I could attempt so 
new a task as you proposed to me. But sup- 
port and encouragement came from our own 
authorities, and, like many other thousands of 
English women under orders, I could only go 
and do my best. I spent some time in the 
munition areas, watching the enormous and 
rapid development of our war industries and 



4 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

of the astonishing part played in it by women; 
I was allowed to visit a portion of the Fleet, 
and finally, to spend twelve days in France, 
ten of them among the great supply bases and 
hospital camps, with two days at the British 
Headquarters, and on the front, near Pope- 
ringhe, and Riehebourg St. Vaast. 

The result was a short book which has been 
translated into many foreign tongues — French, 
Italian, Dutch, German, Russian, Portuguese, 
and Japanese, — which has brought me many 
American letters from many different States, 
and has been, perhaps, most widely read of all 
among our own people. For we all read news- 
papers, and we all forget them ! In this vast 
and changing struggle events huddle on each 
other, so that the new blurs and wipes out the 
old. There is always room — is there not? — 
for such a personal narrative as may recall to 
us the main outlines and the chief determining 
factors of a war, in which — often — everything 
seems to us in flux, and our eyes, amid the tu- 
mult of the stream, are apt to lose sight of the 
landmarks on its banks, and the signs of the 
approaching goal. 

And now again — after a year — I have been 
attempting a similar task, with renewed and 
cordial help from our authorities at home and 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 5 

abroad. And I venture to address these new- 
letters directly to yourself, as to that American 
of all others, to whom this second chapter of 
England's Effort may look for sympathy. 
Whither are we tending — your country and 
mine? Congress meets to-day. Before this 
letter appears great decisions will have been 
taken. I will not attempt to speculate. The 
logic of facts will sweep our nations together 
in some sort of intimate union — of that I have 
no doubt. 

How much further, then, has Great Britain 
marched since the Spring of last year — how 
much nearer is she to the end ? One can but 
answer such questions in the most fragmentary 
and tentative way, relying for the most part 
on the opinions and information of those who 
know, those who are in the van of action, at 
home and abroad, but also on one's own per- 
sonal impressions of an incomparable scene. 
And every day, almost, at this breathless mo- 
ment, the answer of yesterday may become 
obsolete. 

I left our Headquarters in France some 
days before the news of the Russian revo- 
lution reached London, and while the Somme 
retirement was still in its earlier stages. Im- 
mediately afterwards the events of one short 



6 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

week transformed the whole political aspect 
of Europe, and may well prove to have changed 
the face of the war — although as to that, let 
there be no dogmatising yet ! But before the 
pace becomes faster still, and before the un- 
folding of those great and perhaps final events 
we may now dimly foresee, let me try and 
seize the impressions of some memorable weeks 
and bring them to bear — so far as the war is 
concerned — on those questions which, in the 
present state of affairs, must interest you in 
America scarcely less than they interest us 
here. Where, in fact, do we stand? 

Any kind of answer must begin with the 
Navy — for, in the case of Great Britain, and 
indeed scarcely less in the case of the Allies, 
that is the foundation of everything. To 
yourself the facts will all be familiar; but for 
the benefit of those innumerable friends of the 
Allies in Europe and America whom I would 
fain reach with the help of your great name, 
I will run through a few of the recent — the 
ground — facts of the past year. As I myself 
ran through them a few days ago, before, with 
an Admiralty permit, I went down to one of 
the most interesting naval bases on our coast, 
and found myself amid a group of men en- 
gaged night and day in grappling with the 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 7 

submarine menace, which threatens not only 
Great Britain, not only the Allies, but your- 
selves, and every neutral nation. It is, in- 
deed, well to go back to the facts ! They are 
worthy of this island nation, and her sea- 
born children. 

To begin with, the personnel of the British 
Navy, which at the beginning of the war was 
140,000, was last year 300,000. This year it 
is 400,000, or very nearly three times what it 
was before the war. Then as to ships. "If 
we were strong in capital ships at the begin- 
ning of the war," said Mr. Balfour last Sep- 
tember, "we are yet stronger now — absolutely 
and relatively — and in regard to cruisers and 
destroyers there is absolutely no comparison 
between our strength in 1914 and our strength 
now. There is no part of our naval strength 
in which we have not got a greater supply, 
and in some departments an incomparably 
greater supply, than we had on August 4, 1914. 
. . . The tonnage of the Navy has increased 
by well over a million tons since war began." 

So Mr. Balfour, six months ago. Five months 
later it fell to Sir Edward Carson to move the 
naval estimates, under pressure, as we all 
know, of the submarine anxiety. He spoke 
in the frankest and plainest language of that 



8 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

anxiety, as did the Prime Minister in his now 
famous speech of February 22d, and as did 
the speakers in the House of Lords, Lord Lyt- 
ton, Lord Curzon, and Lord Beresford, on the 
same date. The attack is not yet checked. The 
danger is not over. 

Still, again, look at some of the facts ! 

In two years and a quarter of war: 

Eight million men moved across the seas — 
almost without mishap. 

Nine million and a half tons of explosives 
carried to our own armies and those of our 
allies. 

Over a million horses and mules; and 

Over forty-seven million gallons of petrol 
supplied to the armies. 

And besides, twenty-five thousand ships 
have been examined for contraband of war 
on the high seas, or in harbour, since the war 
began. 

And at this one must pause a moment to 
think — once again — what it means, to call up 
the familiar image of Britain's ships, large and 
small, scattered over the wide Atlantic and 
the approaches to the North Sea, watching 
there through winter and summer, storm and 
fair, and so carrying out relentlessly the 
blockade of Germany, through every circum- 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 9 

stance often of danger and difficulty; with 
every consideration for neutral interests that 
is compatible with this desperate war, in which 
the very existence of England is concerned; 
and without the sacrifice of a single life, unless 
it be the lives of British sailors, often lost in 
these boardings of passing ships amid the 
darkness and storm of winter seas. 

There, indeed, in these "wave-beaten ships," 
as in the watching fleets of the English Ad- 
mirals outside Toulon and Brest, while Na- 
poleon was marching triumphantly about Eu- 
rope, lies the root fact of the war. It is a 
commonplace, but one that has been "proved 
upon our pulses." Who does not remember 
the shock that went through England and 
the civilised world when the first partial news 
of the battle of Jutland reached London, and 
we were told our own losses, before we knew 
either the losses of the enemy or the general 
result of the battle? It was neither fear nor 
panic; but it was as though the nation, hold- 
ing its breath, realised for the first time where, 
for it, lay the vital elements of being. The 
depths in us were stirred. We knew in 
very deed that we were the children of the 
sea! 

And now again the depths are stirred. The 



10 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

development of the submarine attack has set 
us a new and stern task, and we are "straitened 
till it be accomplished." The great battle- 
ships seem almost to have left the stage. In 
less than three months, said Sir Edward Car- 
son, speaking on February 21st, 626,000 tons 
of British, neutral, and allied shipping had 
been destroyed. Since the beginning of the 
war we — Great Britain — have lost over two 
million tons of shipping, and our allies and 
the neutrals have lost almost as much. There 
is a certain shortage of food in Great Britain, 
and a shortage of many other things besides. 

Writing about the middle of February, an 
important German newspaper raised a shout 
of jubilation. "The whole sea was as if swept 
clean at one blow" — by the announcement of 
the intensified "blockade" of February 1st. 
So, the German scribe. But again the facts 
shoot up — hard and irreducible, through the 
sea of comment. While the German news- 
papers were shouting to each other, the sea 
was so far from being "swept clean," that 
12,000 ships had actually passed in and out 
of British ports in the first eighteen days of 
the "blockade." And at any moment dur- 
ing those days at least 3,000 ships could have 
been found traversing the "danger zone," 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 11 

which the Germans imagined themselves to have 
barred. One is reminded of the Hamburger 
Nachrichten last year, after the Zeppelin raid 
in January, 1916: "English industry lies in 
ruins," said that astonishing print. "The sea 
has been swept clean," says one of its brethren 
now. Yet all the while there, in the danger 
zone, whenever, by day or night, one turns 
one's thoughts to it, are the 3,000 ships; and 
there, in the course of a fortnight, are the 12,000 
ships going and coming. 

Yet all the same, as I have said before, 
there is danger and there is anxiety. The 
neutrals — save America — have been intimi- 
dated; they are keeping their ships in har- 
bour; and to do without their tonnage is a 
serious matter for us. Meanwhile the best 
brains in naval England are at work, and one 
can feel the sailors straining at the leash. 

In the first eighteen days of February there 
were forty fights with submarines. The Navy 
talks very little about them, and says nothing 
of which it is not certain. But all the scien- 
tific resources, all the fighting brains of naval 
England are being brought to bear, and we 
at home — let us keep to our rations, the only 
thing we can do to help our men at sea ! . . . 

. . . How this grey estuary spread before 



12 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

my eyes illustrates and illuminates the figures 
I have been quoting! I am on the light 
cruiser of a famous Commodore, and I have 
just been creeping and climbing through a 
submarine. The waters round are crowded 
with those light craft — destroyers, submarines, 
mine-sweepers, trawlers, patrol-boats — on 
which for the moment, at any rate, the for- 
tunes of the naval war turn. And take notice 
that they are all — or almost all — new : the 
very latest products of British shipyards. We 
have plenty of battleships — but "we must now 
build, as quickly as possible, the smaller craft, 
and the merchant ships we want," says Sir 
Edward Carson. Not a slip in the country 
will be empty during the coming months. 
Every rivet put into a ship will contribute to 
the defeat of Germany. And 47 per cent of 
the Merchant Service have already been armed. 
The riveters must indeed have been hard at 
work! This crowded scene carries me back 
to the Clyde, where I was last year, to the new 
factories and workshops, with their ever- 
increasing throng of women, and to the mar- 
vellous work of the shipyards. No talk now 
of strikes, of a disaffected and revolutionary 
minority on the Clyde, as there was twelve 
months ago. The will of the nation has be- 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 13 

come as steel — to win the war. Throughout 
England, as in these naval officers beside me, 
there is the same tense yet disciplined expec- 
tancy. As we lunch and talk, on this cruiser 
at rest, messages come in perpetually; the 
cruiser itself is ready for the open sea, at an 
hour and a half's notice; the sea-planes pass 
out and come in over the mouth of the har- 
bour on their voyages of discovery and report, 
and these destroyers and mine-sweepers that 
lie so quietly near us will be out again to- 
night in the North Sea, grappling with every 
difficulty and facing every danger, in the true 
spirit of a wonderful service, while we land- 
folk sleep and eat in peace — grumbling, no 
doubt, with our morning newspaper and coffee, 
when any of the German destroyers who come 
out from Zeebrugge are allowed to get home 
with a whole skin. "What on earth is the 
Navy about?" Well, the Navy knows. Ger- 
many is doing her very worst, and will go on 
doing it — for a time. The line of defensive 
watch in the North Sea is long; the North 
Sea is a big place; the Germans often have 
the luck of the street-boy who rings a bell and 
runs away before the policeman comes up. 
But the Navy has no doubts. The situation, 
says one of my cheerful hosts, is quite 



14 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

"healthy," and we shall see "great things in 
the coming months.' ' We had better leave 
it at that ! 

Now let us look at these destroyers in an- 
other scene. It is the last day of February, 
and I find myself on a military steamer bound 
for a French Port, and on my way to the 
British Headquarters in France. With me 
is the same dear daughter who accompanied 
me last year as "dame secretaire" on my 
first errand. The boat is crowded with sol- 
diers, and before we reach the French shore 
we have listened to almost every song — old and 
new — in Tommy's repertory. There is even 
"Tipperary," a snatch, a ghost of "Tipperary," 
intermingled with many others, rising and fall- 
ing, no one knows why, started now here, now 
there, and dying away again after a line or 
two. It is a draught going out to France for the 
first time, north countrymen, by their accent; 
and life-belts and submarines seem to amuse 
them hugely, to judge by the running fire of 
chaff that goes on. But after a while I cease 
to listen. I am thinking first of what awaits 
us on the farther shore, on which the lights 
are coming out, and of those interesting passes 
inviting us to G. H. Q. as "Government 
Guests," which lie safe in our hand-bags. 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 15 

And then my thoughts slip back to a conver- 
sation of the day before with Dr. Addison, 
the new Minister of Munitions. 

A man in the prime of life, with whitening 
hair — prematurely white, for the face and 
figure are quite young still — and stamped, so 
far as expression and aspect are concerned, 
by those social and humane interests which 
first carried him into Parliament. I have been 
long concerned with Evening Play Centres for 
school-children in Hoxton, one of the most 
congested quarters of our East End. And 
seven years ago I began to hear of the young 
and public-spirited doctor and man of science, 
who had made himself a name and place in 
Hoxton, who had won the confidence of the 
people crowded in its unlovely streets, had 
worked for the poor and the sick, and the 
children, and had now beaten the Tory mem- 
ber, and was Hoxton's Liberal representative 
in the new Parliament elected in January, 
1910, to deal with the Lords, after the throw- 
ing out of Lloyd George's famous Budget. 

Once or twice since, I had come across him 
in matters concerned with education — cripple 
schools and the like — when he was Parlia- 
mentary Secretary to the Board of Educa- 
tion, immediately before the war. And now 



16 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

here was the doctor, the Hunterian Pro- 
fessor, the social worker, the friend of schools 
and school-children, transformed into the 
fighting Minister of a great fighting Depart- 
ment, itself the creation of the war, only second 
— if second — in its importance for the war, to 
the Admiralty and the War Office. And what 
a story the new Minister has to tell ! I was 
myself, for a fortnight of last year, the guest 
of the Ministry of Munitions, while Mr. Lloyd 
George was still its head, in some of the most 
important munition areas ; and I was then able 
to feel the current of hot energy started by 
the first Minister, running — not, of course, 
without local obstacles and animosities — 
through an electrified England. That was in 
February, 1916. Then, in August, came the 
astonishing speech of Mr. Montagu, on the 
development of the Munitions supply in one 
short year, as illustrated by the happenings 
of the Somme battlefield. And now, as suc- 
cessor to Mr. Montagu and Mr. Lloyd George, 
Dr. Addison sat in the Minister's chair, con- 
tinuing the story. 

How true it is that circumstances at once 
discover and make the men ! Given my own 
art, it is perhaps natural that the growth of 
personality is one of the most interesting things 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 17 

in the world to me. And as the Minister ran 
through the expansions of his own Depart- 
ment, the aspect of the matter was especially 
plain to me. Starting from the manufacture 
of guns, ammunition, and explosives, and after 
pushing that to incredible figures, the neces- 
sities of its great task has led the Ministry to 
one forward step* after another. Seeing that 
the supply of Munitions depends on the sup- 
ply of raw material, it is now regulating the 
whole mineral supply of this country, and much 
of that of the Allies; it is about to work quali- 
ties of iron ore that have never been worked 
before; it is deciding over the length and 
breadth of the country how much aluminum 
should be allowed to one firm, how much cop- 
per to another; it is producing steel for our 
Allies as well as for ourselves; it has taken over 
with time the supply of Motor Transport 
Vehicles for the War Office, and is now adding 
to it the provision of Railway Material here 
and abroad, and is dictating meanwhile to 
every engineering firm in the country which 
of its orders should come first, and which last. 
It is managing a whole gigantic industry with 
employees running into millions, half a mil- 
lion of them women, and managing it under 
wholly new conditions of humanity and fore- 



18 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

thought; it is housing and feeding and caring 
for innumerable thousands; transforming from 
day to day, as by a kind of bywork, the in- 
dustrial mind and training of multitudes, and 
laying the foundations of a new, and surely 
happier England, after the war; and, finally, 
it is adjusting, with, on the whole, great suc- 
cess, the rival claims of the factories and the 
trenches, sending more and more men from 
the workshops to the fighting-line, in propor- 
tion as the unskilled labour of the country of 
men and women, but especially of women — 
is drawn, more and more widely, into the ser- 
vice of a dwindling amount of skilled labour, 
more and more "diluted." While the Minis- 
ter's vivid talk ranged over this immense 
field, one realised the truth of the saying: "It 
is by pumping that one draws water into one's 
well:" in other words, it is action, and again 
action, that develops the strong man, and 
tests the weak one. 

I recall particularly a little story of — lubri- 
cating oil! Lubricating oil, essential to the 
immense Motor Transport in the war, depends 
apparently upon two things — the shale from 
which the oil is extracted — the retorts in which 
it is manufactured. Two sets of employers, 
two sets of workers were concerned — each 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 19 

with their claim on railway-trucks; and no co- 
ordination between the two. The shale lay 
waiting for the retorts; the retorts sat idle for 
lack of shale. But the Ministry stepped in; 
there was a conference in the Minister's room; 
a little good-will and organisation, and the 
trucks were pooled, the shale was brought to 
the retorts, the retorts were made available 
for the shale. Result — important increase in 
a product necessary to the war, and an im- 
portant decrease in the expenses of produc- 
tion. So much for the Ministry on its home 
ground. Abroad, close to the front, which 
the Ministry of Munitions, under Mr. Lloyd 
George and Mr. Montagu, covered last year 
with that vast supply of guns of all calibre, 
and ammunitions of all kinds, which contrib- 
uted so vitally to win us the battle of the 
Somme, and in its still further development is 
now assuring the safety and success of our 
armies as we pursue the German retreat — I 
came upon many traces of the present Minister 
in France, and all suggestive of the same 
quick and sympathetic intelligence. 

. . . But the light is failing, and the shore 
is nearing. Life-belts are taken off, the de- 
stroyers have disappeared. We are on the 
quay, kindly welcomed by an officer from 



20 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

G. H. Q., who passes our bags rapidly through 
the Custom House, and carries us off to a 
neighbouring hotel for the night, it being too 
late for the long drive to G. H. Q. 

We are in France again — and the great pres- 
ence of the army is all about us. The quay 
crowded with soldiers, the port alive with 
ships, the grey-blue uniforms mingling with 
the khaki — after a year I see it again, and one's 
pulses quicken. The vast effort of England 
which last year had already reached so great 
a height, and has now, as all accounts testify, 
been so incredibly developed, is here once more, 
in visible action, before me. 

The following morning the motor arrives 
early, and with our courteous officer who 
has charge of us in front, we are off, first, 
for one of the great camps I saw last year, 
and then for G. H. Q. itself. On the way, 
as we speed over the rolling-down country 
beyond the town, my eyes are keen to catch 
some of the new signs of the time. Here is 
the first — a railway line in process of doub- 
ling — and large numbers of men, some of 
them German prisoners, working at it; typi- 
cal, both of the immense railway develop- 
ment all over the military zone, since last year, 
and of the extensive use now being made of 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 21 

prisoners' labour, in regions well behind the 
firing-line. They lift their heads as we pass, 
looking with curiosity at the two ladies in the 
military car. Their flat, round caps give them 
an odd similarity. It is as if one saw scores 
of the same face, differentiated here and there 
by a beard. A docile, hard-working crew, by 
all accounts, who give no trouble, and are 
managed largely by their N. C. O's. Are 
there some among them who saw the massacre 
at Dinant, the terrible things in Lorraine? 
Their placid, expressionless faces tell no tale. 

But the miles have flown, and here already 
are the long lines of the camp. How pleasant 
to be greeted by some of the same officers ! 
We go into the Headquarters Office, for a 
talk. "Grown? I should think we have!" 

says Colonel . And, rapidly, he and one 

of his colleagues run through some of the ad- 
ditions and expansions. The Training-Camp 
has been practically doubled, or rather an- 
other training-camp has been added to the 
one that existed last year, and both are 
equipped with an increased number of special 
schools — an Artillery Training School, an En- 
gineer Training School, a Lewis Gun School, 
an actual gas-chamber for the training of men 
in the use of their gas-helmets — and others, of 



22 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

which it is not possible to speak. "We have 
put through half a million of reinforcements 
since you were here last." And close upon 
two million rations were issued last month ! 
The veterinary accommodation has been much 
enlarged, and two Convalescent Horse Depots 
have been added — (it is good indeed to see 
with what kindness and thought the Army 
treats its horses). But the most novel addi- 
tion to the camp has been a Fat Factory for 
the production of fat — from which comes the 
glycerin used in explosives — out of all the food 
refuse of the camp. The fat produced by the 
system, here and in England, has already pro- 
vided glycerin for millions of eighteen-pounder 
shells; the problem of camp refuse, always a 
desperate one, has been solved; and as a com- 
mercial venture, the factory makes 250 per 
cent profit. 

Undeterred by what we hear of the smells, 
we go off to see it, and the enthusiastic man- 
ager explains the unsavoury processes by which 
the bones and refuse of all the vast camp are 
boiled down into a white fat, that looks almost 
eatable, but is meant, as a matter of fact, to 
feed not men, but shells. Nor is that the 
only contribution to the fighting-line which 
the factory makes. All the cotton waste of 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 23 

the hospitals — the old dressings and bandage 
— come here, and after sterilisation and dis- 
infection, go to England for guncotton. Was 
there ever a grimmer cycle than this, by which 
that which feeds and that which heals become 
in the end that which kills ? 

But let me try to forget that side of it, and 
remember, rather, as we leave the smells be- 
hind, that the calcined bones become artificial 
manure, and go back again into the tortured 
fields of France, while other by-products of the 
factory help the peasants near to feed their 
pigs. And anything, however small, that helps 
the peasants of France in this war comforts 
one's heart. 

We climb up to the high ground of the camp 
for a general view before we go on to G. H. Q., 
and I see it, as I saw it last year, spread under 
the March sunshine, among the sand and the 
pines — a wonderful sight. "Everything has 
grown, you see, except the staff!" says the 
Colonel, smiling, as we shake hands. "But we 
rub along!" 

Then we are in the motor again, and at 
last the new G. H. Q. — how different from that 
I saw last year ! — rises before us. We make 
our way into the town, and presently the car 
stops for a minute before a building, and 



24 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

while our officer goes within we retreat into 
a side street to wait. But my thoughts are 
busy. For that building, of which the side- 
front is still visible, is the brain of the British 
Army in France, and on the men who work 
there depend the fortunes of that distant 
line, where our brothers and sons are meet- 
ing face to face the horrors and foulnesses of 
war. How many women whose hearts hang 
on the war, whose all is there, in daily and 
nightly jeopardy, read the words "British 
Headquarters" with an involuntary lift of 
soul, an invocation without words. Yet 
scarcely half a dozen women in this war will 
ever see the actual spot. And here it is, un- 
der my eyes, the cold March sun shining fit- 
fully on it, the sentry at the door, the khaki 
figures passing in and out. I picture to my- 
self the room within, and the news arriving 
of General Gough's advance on the Ancre; of 
the rapidity of that German retreat as to 
which all Europe is speculating. 

But we move on — to a quiet country house 
in a town garden — the Headquarters Mess of 
the Intelligence Department. Here I find 
among our kind hosts, anen already known to 
me from my visit of the year before, men 
whose primary business it is to watch the 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 25 

enemy, who know where every German regi- 
ment and German Commander are, who, 
through the aerial photography of our airmen 
are now acquainted with every step of the 
German retreat, and have already the photo- 
graphs of his second line. All the informa- 
tion gathered from prisoners and from in- 
numerable other sources comes here; and the 
Department has its eye besides on everything 
that happens within the zone of our armies in 
France. For a woman to be received here is 
an exception — perhaps I may say an honour 
— of which I am rather tremulously aware. 
Can I make it worth while ? But a little con- 
versation with these earnest and able men 
make it clear that they have considered the 
matter like any other incident in the day's 
work. England's Effort has been useful, there- 
fore I am to be allowed again to see and write 
for myself; and therefore what information 
can be given me as to the growth of our mili- 
tary power in France since last year will be 
given. It is not, of course, a question of war 
correspondence, which is not within a woman's 
powers. But it is a question of as much "see- 
ing" as can be arranged for, combined with as 
much first-hand information as time and the 
censor allow. I begin to see my way. 



26 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

The conversation at luncheon — the simplest 
of meals — and during a stroll afterwards is 
thrilling indeed to us newcomers. "The com- 
ing summer's campaign must decide the issue 
of the war — though it may not see the end of 
it." "The issue of the war" — and the fate 
of Europe ! There is no doubt here as to the 
final issue; but there is a resolute refusal to 
fix dates, or prophesy details. "Man for man 
we are now the better army. Our strength is 
increasing month by month, while that of 
Germany is failing. Men and officers, who, a 
year ago were still insufficiently trained, are 
now seasoned troops with nothing to learn 
from the Germans; and the troops recruited 
under the Military Service Act, now beginning 
to come out, are of surprisingly good quality." 
On such lines the talk ran and it is over all 
too soon. 

Then we are in the motor again, bound for 
an aerodrome forty or fifty miles away. 



II 

March 31st, 1917. 

Dear Mr. Roosevelt, 

My last letter left us starting from General 
Headquarters for a long motor drive to see an 
aerodrome, some forty or fifty miles to the 
north. The talk at G. H. Q. had been so 
absorbing that we are late in getting off. 

The last twenty-seven kilometres of the road 
fly by in thirty-two minutes. It is a rolling 
country and there are steep descents and 
sharp climbs through the thickly scattered 
villages and small old towns of the Nord, vil- 
lages crowded all of them with our men. 
Presently, with a start, we find ourselves on a 
road which saw us last spring — a year ago to 
the day. The same blue distances, the same 
glimpses of old towns in the hollows, the same 
touches of snow on the heights. At last, in 
the cold sunset light, we draw up at our desti- 
nation. The wide Aerodrome stretches before 
us; great hangars coloured so as to escape the 
notice of a Boche overhead; machines of all 
sizes rising and landing, coming out of the 
hangars, or returning to them for the night. 

27 



28 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

Two of the officers in charge meet us, and 
I walk round with them, looking closely at the 
various types — those for fighting, and those 
for observation — while I understand — what I 
can ! But the spirit of the men — that one can 
understand. "We are accumulating, concen- 
trating now for the summer offensive. Of 
course the Germans have been working hard 
too. They have lots of new and improved 
machines. But when the test comes we are 
confident that we shall down them again as 
we did on the Somme. For us the all impor- 
tant thing is the fighting behind the enemy lines. 
Our object is to prevent the German machines 
from rising at all, to keep them down while 
our airmen are reconnoitring along the fight- 
ing-line. Awfully dangerous work ! Lots don't 
come back. But what then ? They will have 
done their job !" 

The words were spoken so carelessly that 
for a few seconds I did not realise their mean- 
ing. But there was that in the expression of 
the man who spoke them which showed there 
was no lack of realisation there. How often 
have I recalled them with a sore heart in these 
recent weeks of heavy losses in the air-service 
— losses due, I have no doubt, to the special 
claims upon it of the German retreat. 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 29 

The conversation dropped a little, till one 
of my companions, with a smile, pointed over- 
head. Three splendid biplanes were sailing 
above us at a great height bound southward. 
"Back from the line!" said the officer beside 
me, and we watched them till they dipped and 
disappeared in the sunset clouds. Then tea 
and pleasant talk. The young men insist 
that D. shall make tea. This visit of two 
ladies is a unique event. For the moment, as 
she makes tea in their sitting-room, which is 
now full of men, there is an illusion of home. 

Then we are off for another fifty miles. 
Darkness comes on, the roads are unfamiliar. 
At last, an avenue, and bright lights. We 
have reached the Visitors' Chateau under the 
wing of G. H. Q. On the steps stood the same 

courteous host, Captain , who presided last 

year over another Guest-House far away. But 
we were not to sleep at the Chateau, which 
was already full of guests. Arrangements had 
been made for us at a cottage in the village 
near, belonging to the village schoolmistress; 
the motor took us there immediately, and after 
changing our travel-stained dresses, we went 
back to the Chateau for dinner. Many guests 
— all of them of course of the male sex, and 
much talk! Some of the guests — Members 



30 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

of Parliament, and foreign correspondents — 
had been over the Somme battle-field that day, 
and gave discouraging accounts of the effects 
of the thaw upon the roads and the ground 
generally. Banished for a time by the frost, 
the mud had returned; and mud, on the front, 
becomes a kind of malignant force which affects 
the spirits of the soldiers. 

The schoolmistress and her little maid sat 
up for us, and shepherded us kindly to bed. 
Never was there a more strangely built little 
house. The ceilings came down on our heads, 
the stairs were perpendicular. But there was 
a stove in each room, and the beds though hard, 
and the floor though bare, were scrupulously 
clean. 

In the early morning I woke up and looked 
out. There had been a white frost, and the 
sun was just rising in a clear sky. Its yel- 
low light was shining on the whitewashed 
wall of the next cottage, on which a large 
pear-tree was trained. All round were frost- 
whitened plots of garden or meadow — preaux 
— with tall poplars in the hedges cutting the 
morning sky. Suddenly, I heard a continuous 
murmur in the room beneath me. It was the 
schoolmistress and her maid at prayer. And, 
presently, the house door opened and shut. 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 31 

It was Mademoiselle who had gone to early 
Mass. For the school was an ecole libre, and 
the little lady who taught it was a devout 
Catholic. The rich yet cold light, the frosty 
quiet of the village, the thin French trees 
against the sky, the ritual murmur in the room 
below — it was like a scene from a novel by 
Rene Bazin, and breathed the old, the tradi- 
tional France. 

We were to start early and motor far, but 
there was time before we started for a little 
talk with Mademoiselle. She was full of 
praise for our English soldiers, some of whom 
were billetted in the village. "They are very 
kind to our people," she said. "They often 
help the women, and they never complain." 
(Has the British Tommy in these parts really 
forgotten how to grouse ?) "I had some of your 
men billetted here. I could only give them a 
room without beds, just the bare boards. 
'You will find it hard,' I said. 'We will get a 
little straw/ said the sergeant. 'That will be 
all right.' Our men would have grumbled." 
(But I think this was Mademoiselle's politesse !) 
"And the children are devoted to your soldiers. 
I have a dear little girl in the school, nine years 
old. Sometimes from the window she sees 
a man in the street, a soldier wno lodges 



32 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

with her mother. Then I cannot hold her. 
She is like a wild thing to be gone. 'Voila 
mon camarade ! — voila mon camarade ! ' Out 
she goes, and is soon walking gravely beside 
him, hand in hand, looking up at him. How 
do they understand each other ? I don't know. 
But they have a language. Your sergeants 
often know more French than your officers, 
because they have to do the billetting and the 
talking to our people." 

The morning was still bright when the motor 
arrived, but the frost had been keen, and the 
air on the uplands was biting. We speed 
first across a famous battle-field, where French 
and English bones lie mingled below the quiet 
grass, and then turn southeast. Nobody on 
the roads. The lines of poplar-trees fly past, 
the magpies flutter from the woods, and one 
might almost forget the war. Suddenly, a 
railway -line, a steep descent, and we are full 
in its midst again. 

On our left an encampment of Nissen huts 
— so called from their inventor, a Canadian 
officer — those new and ingenious devices for 
housing troops, or labour battalions, or col- 
oured workers, at an astonishing saving both 
of time and material. In shape like the old- 
fashioned beehive, each hut can be put up 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 33 

by four or six men in a few hours. Every- 
thing is, of course, standardised, and the wood 
which lines their corrugated iron is put to- 
gether in the simplest and quickest ways, 
ways easily suggested, no doubt, to the Cana- 
dian mind, familiar with "shacks" and lumber 
camps. We shall come across them every- 
where along the front. 

But on this first occasion my attention is 
soon distracted from them, for as we turn 
a corner beyond the hut settlement, which 
I am told is that of a machine-gun detach- 
ment, there is an exclamation from D. 

For there — to our left, is a tank — the mon- 
ster! — taking its morning exercise and prac- 
tising up and down the high and almost 
perpendicular banks by which another huge 
field is divided. The motor slackens, and we 
watch the creature slowly attack a high bank, 
land complacently on the top, and then, an 
officer walking beside it to direct its move- 
ments, balance a moment on the edge of an- 
other bank equally high, a short distance away. 
There it is ! — down ! — not flopping, or falling, 
but all in the way of business, gliding unper- 
turbed. London is full of tanks, of course — 
on the films. But somehow to be watching 
a real one, under the French sky, not twenty 



34 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

miles from the line, is a different thing. We 
fall into an eager discussion with Captain F., 
in front, as to the part played by them in the 
Somme battle, and as to what the Germans 
may be preparing in reply to them. And 
while we talk, my eye is caught by some- 
thing on the sky-line, just above the tank. 
It is a man and a plough — a plough that 
might have come out of the Odyssey — the 
oldest, simplest type. So are the ages in- 
terwoven; and one may safely guess that the 
plough — that very type! — will outlast many 
generations of tanks. But for the moment, 
the tanks are in the limelight; and it is luck 
that we should have come upon one so soon; 
for one may motor many miles about the front 
without coming upon any signs of them. 

Next, a fine main road, and an old town, 
seething with all the stir of war. We come 
upon a crowded market-place, and two huge 
convoys passing each other in the narrow 
street beyond — an ammunition column on 
one side, into which our motor humbly fits 
itself as best it can, by order of the officer in 
charge of the column; and a long string of 
magnificent lorries belonging to the Flying 
Corps, which defiles past us on the left. The 
inhabitants of the town, old men, women, 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 35 

and children, stand to watch the hubbub, 
with amused, friendly faces. On we go, for 
a time, in the middle of the convoy. The 
great motor-lorries filled with ammunition 
hem us in, till the town is through, and a 
long hill is climbed. 

At the top of it, we are allowed to draw 
out, and motor slowly past long lines of troops 
on the march; — first, R. E.'s with their store- 
waggons, large and small; then a cyclist de- 
tachment — a machine-gun detachment — field- 
kitchens, a white goat lying lazily on the top 
of one of them — mules, heavily laden — Lewis 
guns in little carts. Then infantry marching 
briskly in the keen air; while along other 
roads visible to east and west, we see other 
columns converging. It is a division on the 
march. The physique of the men, their alert 
and cheerful looks, strike me particularly. 
This pitiless war seems to have revealed to 
England herself the quality of her race. But 
something is to be said also for the gym- 
nastic instructors of the Army, who in the 
last twelve months especially have wrought 
wonders. 

At last we turn out of the main road, and 
the endless columns pass away into the dis- 
tance. Again, a railway-line in process of 



36 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

doubling; beyond, a village, which seems to 
be mainly occupied by an Army Medical 
detachment; then two large Casualty Clear- 
ing Stations, and a Divisional Dressing Sta- 
tion. Not many wounded here at present. 
But what activities everywhere ! Horse-lines, 
Army service depots bursting with stores, — 
a great dump of sand-bags — another of am- 
munition. 

And as I look out at the piles of shells, I 
think of the most recent figures furnished me 
by the Ministry of Munitions. Last year, 
when the Somme offensive began, and when 
I was writing England's Effort, the weekly 
output of 18-pounder shells was seventeen 
and a half times what it was during the first 
year of the war. It is now twenty-eight times 
as much. Field Howitzer Ammunition has al- 
most doubled since last July. That of medium 
guns and howitzers has more than doubled. 
That of the heaviest guns of all (over 6 -inch) 
is more than four times as great. By the growth 
of ammunition we may guess what has been 
the increase in guns; especially in those heavy 
guns we are now pushing forward after the 
retreating Germans, as fast as roads and rail- 
way-lines can be made to carry them. The 
German Government, through one of its sub- 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 37 

ordinate spokesmen, has lately admitted their 
inferiority in guns ; their retreat, indeed, on the 
Somme before our pending attack, together 
with the state of their old lines, now we are 
in and over them, show plainly enough what 
they had to fear from the British guns, and 
the abundance of British ammunition. 

But what are these strange figures swarm- 
ing beside the road — black tousled heads, and 
bronze faces ? Kaffir "boys" ! at work in some 
quarries, feeling the cold, no doubt, on this 
bright bitter day, in spite of their long coats. 
They are part of that large body of native 
labour, Chinese, Kaffir, Basuto, which is now 
helping our own men everywhere to push on 
and push up, as the new labour forces behind 
them release more and more of the fighting 
men for that dogged pursuit which is going on 
there — in that blue distance ahead ! 

The motor stops. This is a Headquarters, 
and a Staff -officer comes out to greet us — a boy 
in looks, but a D. S. O. all the same! His 
small car precedes us as a guide, and we keep 
up with him as best we may. These are mining 
villages we are passing through, and on the 
horizon are some of those pyramidal slag- 
heaps — the Fosses — which have seen some of 
the fiercest fighting of the war. But we leave 



38 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

the villages behind, and are soon climbing 
into a wooded upland. Suddenly, a halt. A 
notice-board forbids the use of a stretch of 
road before us "from sunrise to sunset." Evi- 
dently it is under German observation. We 
try to find another, parallel. But here, too, 
the same notice confronts us. We dash along 
it however, and my pulses run a little quicker, 
as I realise, from the maps we carry, how near 
we are to the enemy lines which he hidden in 
the haze, eastward; and, from my own eyes, 
how exposed is the hillside. 

But we are safely through, and a little 
farther we come to a wood — a charming wood, 
to all seeming, of small trees, which in a week 
or two will be full of spring leaf and flower. 
But we are no sooner in it, jolting up its main 
track, than we understand the grimness of 
what it holds. Spring and flowers have not 
much to say to it! For this wood and its 
neighbourhood — Ablain St. Nazaire, Carency, 
Neuville St. Vaast — have seen war at its crud- 
est; thousands of brave lives have been yielded 
here; some of the dead are still lying unburied, 
in its farthest thickets, and men will go softly 
through it in the years to come. "Stranger, 
go and tell the Lacedemonians that we lie 
here, obedient to their will": — the immortal 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 39 

words are in my ears. But how many are the 
sacred spots in this land for which they speak ! 

We leave the motor, and walk on through 
the wood to the bare upland beyond. The 
wood is still a wood of death, actual or poten- 
tial. Our own batteries are all about us; so 
too are the remains of French batteries, from 
the days when the French still held this por- 
tion of the line. We watch the gunners among 
the trees, and presently pass an encampment 
of their huts. Beyond, a high and grassy 
plateau — fringes of wood on either hand. But 
we must not go to the edge on our right, so as 
to look down into the valley below. Through 
the thin leafless trees, however, we see plainly 
the ridges that stretch eastward, one behind the 
other, "suffused in sunny air." There are 
the towns of Mont St. Eloy — ours; the Berton- 
val Wood — ours; and the famous Vimy ridge, 
blue in the middle distance, of which half is 
ours, and half German. We are very near the 
line. Notre Dame de Lorette is not very far 
away, though too far for us to reach the actual 
spot, the famous bluff, round which the battle 
raged in 1915. 

And now the guns begin ! — the first we have 
heard since we arrived. From our left — as it 
seemed — some distance away, came the short. 



40 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

sharp reports of the trench-mortars; but pres- 
ently, as we walked on, guns just behind us, 
and below us, began to boom over our heads; 
and we heard again the long-drawn scream or 
swish of the shells, rushing on their deadly 
path to search out the back of the enemy's 
lines in the haze yonder, and flinging confusion 
on his lines of communication, his supplies and 
reserves. He does not reply. He has, indeed, 
been strangely meek of late. The reason here 
cannot be that he is slipping away, as is the 
case farther south. The Vimy ridge is firmly 
held; it is indeed the pivot of the retreat. 
Perhaps, to-day, he is economising. But of 
course, at any moment, he might reply. After 
a certain amount of hammering he must reply ! 
And there are some quite fresh shell-holes 
along our path, some of them not many hours 
old. Altogether, it is with relief that, as the 
firing grows hotter we turn back and pick up 
the motor in the wood again. 

And yet one is loath to go ! Never again 
shall I stand in such a scene — never again be- 
hold those haunted ridges, and this wood of 
death. To have shared ever so little in such 
a bit of human experience is, for a woman, a 
thing of awe, if one has time to think of it. 
Not even groups of artillerymen, chatting or 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 41 

completing their morning's toilet, amid the 
thin trees, can dull that sense in me. They 
are only "strafing" Fritz; or making ready to 
"strafe" him; they have had an excellent 
midday meal in the huts yonder; and they 
whistle and sing as they go about their work, 
disappearing sometimes into mysterious re- 
gions out of sight. That is all there is in it, 
for them. They are "doing their job" like 
the airmen, and if a German shell finds them 
in the wood, why the German will have done 
his job, and they will bear no grudge. It is 
as simple as that — for them. But to the on- 
looker, they are all figures in a great design 
— woven into the terrible tapestry of War, 
and charged with a meaning for the world 
that we of this actual generation shall never 
more than dimly understand. 

Again we rush along the exposed road and 
back into the mining region, taking a westward 
turn. A stately chateau comes into view, 
and, near it, a smaller house, where a General 
greets us. Lunch is over, for we are late, 
but it is hospitably brought back for us, 
and the General and I plunge into talk of the 
retreat, of what it means for the Germans, 
and what it will mean for us. After lunch- 
eon, we go into the next room to look at 



42 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

the General's big maps, which show clearly 
how the salients run, the smaller and the larger, 
from which the Germans are falling back, fol- 
lowed closely and rapidly by the troops of 
General Gough. News of the condition of the 
enemy's abandoned lines is coming in fast. 
"Let no one make any mistake," says my host. 
"They have gone because they must — be- 
cause of the power of our artillery, which 
never stops hammering them, whether on the 
line, or behind the line; which interferes with 
all their communications and supplies, and 
makes life intolerable. At the same time, the 
retreat is being skilfully done, and will of 
course delay any immediate offensive there. 
That was why they did it. We shall have 
to push up roads, railways, supplies; the 
bringing up of the heavy guns will take time; 
but less time than they think ! Our men are 
in the pink of condition !" 

On which, again, follows very high praise of 
the quality of the men now coming out under 
the Military Service Act. "Yet they are con- 
scripts," says one of us, in some surprise — "and 
the rest were volunteers." "No doubt but 
these are the men — many of them — who had 
to balance duties — who had wives and children 
to leave, and businesses which depended on 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 43 

them personally. Compulsion has cut the knot 
and eased their conscience. They'll make fine 
soldiers. But we want more — more!" And 
then follows talk on the wonderful develop- 
ments of training — even since last year; and 
some amusing reminiscences of the early days 
of England's astounding effort, by which vast 
mobs of eager recruits, without guns, uniform, 
or teachers, have been turned into the magnifi- 
cent armies now fighting in France. 

The War Office has lately issued privately 
some extremely interesting notes on the growth 
and training of the New Armies, of which it 
is only now possible to make public use. 
From these it is clear that in the Great Experi- 
ment of the first two years of war, all phases 
of intellect and capacity have played their 
part. The widely trained mind, taking large 
views as to the responsibility of the Army 
towards the nation delivered into its hands, so 
that not only should it be disciplined for war, 
but made fitter for peace; and the practical 
inventive gifts of individuals, who in seeking 
to meet a special need stumble on something 
universal: — both forces have been constantly 
at work. Discipline and Initiative have been 
the twin conjurers; and the ablest men in the 
Army, to use a homely phrase, have been " out " 



44 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

for both. Many a fresh and valuable piece of 
training has been due to some individual offi- 
cer struck with a new idea, and patiently work- 
ing it out. The special "schools" which are 
now daily increasing the efficiency of the Army 
— if you ask how they arose you will generally 
be able to trace them back to some eager 
young man starting a modest experiment in 
his spare time for the teaching of himself and 
some of his friends, and so developing it that 
the thing is finally recognised, enlarged, and 
made the parent of similar efforts elsewhere. 

Let me describe one such " school" — to me 
a thrilling one, as I saw it on a clear March 
afternoon. A year ago no such thing existed. 
Now, each of our Armies possesses one. 

But this letter is already too long ! 



Ill 

Easter Eve, 1917. 

Dear Mr. Roosevelt, 

Since I finished my last letter to you, be- 
fore the meeting of Congress, great days have 
come and gone. 

America is with us ! 

At last, we English folk can say that to each 
other, without reserve or qualification; and 
into England's mood of ceaseless effort and 
anxiety, there has come a sudden relaxation, 
a breath of something calming and sustaining. 
What your action may be — whether it will 
shorten the war, and how much, no one here 
yet knows. But when in some great strain, 
a friend steps to your side, you don't begin 
with questions. He is there. Your cause, 
your effort, are his. Details will come. Dis- 
cussion will come. But there is a breathing- 
space first, in which feeling rests upon itself, 
before it rushes out in action. Such a breath- 
ing-space for England are these Easter days ! 

Meanwhile the letters from the front come 
in with their new note of joy. "You should 
see the American faces in the Army to-day ! " 

45 



46 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

writes one — "They bring a new light into this 
dismal Spring." How many of them? 
Mayn't we now confess to ourselves and our 
allies, that there is already the equivalent of 
an American division, fighting with the Allied 
Armies in France, who have used every hon- 
est device to get there? They have come in 
by every channel, and under every pretext — 
wavelets, forerunners of the tide. For now, 
you, too, have to improvise great armies, as 
we improvised ours in the first two years of 
war. And with you as with us, your unpre- 
paredness stands as your warrant before his- 
tory that not from American minds and wills 
came the provocation to this war. 

But your actual and realised co-operation 
sets me on lines of thought that distract me, 
for the moment, from the first plan of this 
letter. The special Musketry School with 
which I had meant to open it, must wait till 
its close. I find my mind full instead — in 
connection with the news from Washington — 
of those recently issued War Office pamphlets 
of which I spoke in my last letter and I pro- 
pose to run through their story. These pam- 
phlets, issued not for publication, but for the 
information of those concerned, are the first 
frank record of our national experience in con- 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 47 

nection with the war; and for all your wonder- 
ful American resource and inventiveness, your 
American energy and wealth, you will certainly, 
as prudent men, make full use of our experience 
in the coining months. 

Last year, for England's Effort, I tried 
vainly to collect some of these very facts 
and figures, which the War Office was still 
jealously — and no doubt quite rightly — with- 
holding. Now, at last, they are available, 
told by "authority," and one can hardly 
doubt that each of these passing days will 
give them for America a double significance. 
Surpass the story, if you can; we shall bear 
you no grudge ! But up till now, it remains 
a chapter unique in the history of war. Many 
Americans, as your original letter to me 
pointed out, had still, last year, practically no 
conception of what we were doing and had 
done. The majority of our own people, in- 
deed, were in much the same case. While 
the great story was still in the making, while the 
foundations were still being laid, it was impos- 
sible to correct all the anxious underestimates, 
all the ignorant or careless judgments, of peo- 
ple who took a point for the whole. The men 
at the heart of things could only set their 
teeth, keep silence, and give no information 



48 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

that could help the enemy. The battle of 
the Somme, last July, was the first real testing 
of their work. The Hindenburg retreat, the 
successes in Mesopotamia, the marvellous spec- 
tacle of the Armies in France,* are the present 
fruits of it. 

Like you, we had at the outbreak of war, 
some 500,000 men, all told, of whom not half 
were fully trained. None of us British folk 
will ever forget the Rally of the First Hundred 
Thousand ! On the 8th of August, four days 
after the declaration of war, Lord Kitchener 
asked for them. He got them in a fortnight. 
But the stream rushed on. In the fifth week 
of the war alone, 250,000 men enlisted. Thirty 
thousand recruits — the yearly number enlisted 
before the war — joined in one day. Within 
six or seven weeks, the half million available 
at the beginning of the war had been more 
than doubled. 

Then came a pause. The War Office, snowed 
under, not knowing where to turn for clothes, 
boots, huts, rifles, guns, ammunition, tried to 
check the stream by raising the recruiting 
standards. A mistake ! — but soon recognised. 
In another month, under the influence of the 

* [And, before this letter goes to press, the glorious news from the 
Arras front!] 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 49 

victory on the Marne, and while the Germans 
were preparing the attacks on the British line 
so miraculously beaten off in the first battle 
of Ypres, the momentary check had been lost 
in a fresh outburst of national energy. You 
will remember how the Parliamentary Recruit- 
ing Committee came into being, that first 
autumn — how the Prime Minister took the 
lead, and the two great political parties of the 
country agreed to bring all their organisation, 
central or local, to bear on the supreme ques- 
tion of getting men for the Army. Tory and 
Radical toured the country together. The 
hottest opponents stood on the same platform. 
L'union sacree — to use the French phrase, so 
vivid and so true, by which our great ally 
has charmed her own discords to rest in de- 
fence of the country — became a reality here 
too, in spite of strikes, in spite of Ireland. 

By July, 1915, — the end of the first year of 
war — more than 2,000,000 men had volun- 
tarily enlisted. But the military chiefs knew 
well that it was but a half-way house. They 
knew too, by then, that it was not enough to 
get men and rush them out to the trenches as 
soon as any kind of training could be given 
them. The available men must be sorted 
out. Some, indeed, must be brought back 



50 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

from the fighting-line for work as vital as the 
fighting itself. Registration came — the first 
real step towards organising the nation. One 
hundred and fifty thousand voluntary workers 
helped to register all men and women in the 
country, from eighteen to sixty-five, and on 
the results Lord Derby built his group system, 
which almost enabled us to do without com- 
pulsion. Between October and December, 
1915, another two million and a quarter men 
had " attested " — that is had pledged them- 
selves to come up for training when called on. 
And so you come to Mr. Asquith's statement 
on the 2nd of May, 1916, that the total effort 
of the Empire since the beginning of the war 
exceeds 5,000,000 men. 

But, as every observer of this new England 
knows, we have here less than half the story. 
From a nation not invaded, protected, on the 
contrary, by its sea-ramparts from the per- 
sonal cruelties and ravages of war, to gather 
in between four and five million voluntary 
recruits was a great achievement. But to 
turn these recruits at the shortest possible 
notice, under the hammer-blows of a war in 
which our enemies had every initial advantage, 
into armies equipped and trained according to 
modern standards might well have seemed to 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 51 

those who undertook it, an impossible task. 
And the task had to be accomplished, the 
riddle solved, before, in the face of the enemy, 
the incredible difficulties of it could possibly 
be admitted. The creators of the new armies 
worked, as far as they could, behind a screen, 
but now the screen is down, and we are al- 
lowed to see their difficulties in their true 
perspective — as they existed during the first 
months of the war. 

In the first place — accommodation ! At the 
opening of war we had barrack-room for 
176,000 men. What to do with these capped, 
bareheaded, or straw-hatted multitudes who 
poured in at Lord Kitchener's call? They 
were temporarily housed — somehow — under 
every kind of shelter. But military huts for 
half a million men were immediately planned 
— then, for nearly a million. Timber, labour, 
lighting, roads — everything had to be pro- 
vided, and was provided. Billeting filled up 
the gaps, and large camps were built by private 
enterprise to be taken over in time by the 
Government. 

Of course mistakes were made. Of course 
there were some dishonest contractors, and 
some incompetent officials. But the breath, 
the winnowing blast of the national need 



52 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

was behind it all. By the end of the first 
year of war, the "problem of quartering the 
troops in the chief training centres had been 
solved." 

In the next place, there were no clothes. A 
dozen manufacturers of khaki cloth existed 
before the war. They had to be pushed up 
as quickly as possible to 200. Which of us in 
the country districts does not remember the 
blue emergency suits, of which a co-operative 
society was able by a lucky stroke to provide 
400,000 for the new recruits, or the other 
motley coverings of the hosts that drilled in 
our fields, and marched about our lanes? 
The War Office Notes, under my hand, speak 
of these months as the "tatterdemalion stage." 
For what clothes and boots there were, must 
go to the men at the front; and the men at 
home had just to take their chance. 

Well ! — It took a year and five months — 
breathless months of strain and stress — while 
Germany was hammering East and West on 
the long-drawn lines of the Allies. But by 
January, 1916, the Army was not only clothed, 
housed, and very largely armed; but we were 
manufacturing for our allies. 

As to arming and equipment, look back at 
these facts: — 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 53 

When the Expeditionary Force had taken 
its rifles abroad in August, 1914, 150,000 rifles 
were left in the country, and many of them 
required to be resighted. The few Service 
rifles in each battalion were handed round 
"as the Three Fates handed round their one 
eye, in the story of Perseus"; old rifles, and 
inferior rifles "technically known as D. P." 
were eagerly made use of. But after seven 
months' hard training with nothing better than 
these makeshifts "men were apt to get de- 
pressed." 

It was just the same with the Artillery. At 
the outbreak of war we had guns for eight 
divisions — say 140,000 men. And there was 
no plant wherewith to make and keep up more 
than that supply. Yet guns had to be sent as 
fast as they could be made to France, Egypt, 
Gallipoli. How were the gunners at home to 
be trained ? 

It was done, so to speak, with blood and 
tears. For seven months it was impossible 
for the gunners in training even to see, much 
less to work or fire the gun to which he was 
being trained. Zealous officers provided 
dummy wooden guns for their men. All kinds 
of devices were tried. And even when the 
guns themselves arrived, they came often with- 



54 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

out the indispensable accessories — range-find- 
ers, directors, and the like. 

It was a time of hideous anxiety for both 
Government and War Office. For the mili- 
tary history of 1915 was largely a history of 
shortage of guns and ammunition, whether on 
the western or eastern fronts. All the same by 
the end of 1915 the thing was in hand. The 
shells from the new factories were arriving 
in ever increasing volume; and the guns were 
following. 

In a chapter of England's Effort I have de- 
scribed the amazing development of some of 
the great armament works in order to meet 
this cry for guns, as I saw it in February, 1916. 
The second stage of the war had then begun. 
The first was over, and we were steadily over- 
taking our colossal task. The Somme battles 
proved it abundantly. But the expansion still 
goes on — goes on ! 

On my writing-desk is a letter received, 
not many days ago, from a world-famous 
firm whose works I saw last year. "Since 
your visit here in the early part of last year 
there have been very large additions to the 
works." Buildings to accommodate new aero- 
plane and armament construction, of differ- 
ent kinds, are mentioned, and the letter con- 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 55 

tinues: "We have also put up another gun- 
shop, 565 feet long, and 163 feet wide, in 
three extensions, of which the third is near- 
ing completion. These additions are all to 
increase the output of guns. The value of 
that output is now 60 per cent greater than it 
was in 1915. In the last twelve months, the 
output of shells has been one and a half times 
more than it was in the previous year." 

No wonder that the humane director who 
writes speaks with keen sympathy of the "long- 
continued strain" upon masters and men. 
But he adds — "When we all feel it, we think 
of our soldiers and sailors, doing their duty — 
unto death." 

And then — to repeat — if the difficulties of 
equipment were huge, they were almost as 
nothing to the difficulties of training. The facts 
as the War Office has now revealed them — 
(the latest of these most illuminating brochures 
is dated April 2nd, 1917) — are almost incredi- 
ble. It will be an interesting time when our 
War Office and yours come to compare notes ! 
— "when Peace has calmed the world." For 
you are now facing the same grim task — how 
to find the shortest cuts to the making of an 
Army — which confronted us in 1914. 

In the first place, what military trainers 



56 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

there were in the country had to be sent abroad 
with the first Expeditionary Force. Adjutants, 
N. C. O.'s, all the experienced pilots in the 
Flying Corps, nearly all the qualified instruc- 
tors in physical training, the vast majority of 
all the seasoned men in every branch of the 
Service — down, as I have said, to the Army 
cooks — departed overseas. At the very last 
moment an officer or two was shed from every 
battalion of the Expeditionary Force to train 
those left behind. Even so, there was "hardly 
even a nucleus of experts left." And yet 
officers for 500,000 men had to be found — 
within a month — from August 4th, 1914. 

How was it done? The War Office answer 
makes fascinating reading. "The small num- 
ber of regular officers left behind" — 200 offi- 
cers of the Indian Army — retired officers, 
"dugouts" — all honour to them! — wounded 
officers from the front; all were utilised. 
But the chief sources of supply, as we all 
know, were the Officers' Training Corps at 
the Universities and Public Schools which 
we owe to the divination, the patience, the 
hard work of Lord Haldane. Twenty thousand 
potential officers were supplied by the O. T. C.'s. 
What should we have done without them ? 

But even so, there was no time to train them 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 57 

in the practical business of war — and such a 
war ! Yet their business was to train recruits, 
while they themselves were untrained. At 
first, those who were granted "temporary 
commissions" were given a month's training. 
Then even that became impossible. During 
the latter months of 1914 "there was prac- 
tically no special training given to infantry 
subalterns, with temporary commissions." 
With 1915, the system of a month's training 
was revived — pitifully little, yet the best that 
could be done. But during the first five months 
of the war most of the infantry subalterns of 
the new armies "had to train themselves as 
best they could in the intervals of training 
their men." 

One's pen falters over the words. Before 
the inward eye rises the phantom host of these 
boy-officers who sprang to England's aid in 
the first year of the war, and whose graves lie 
scattered in an endless series along the western 
front and on the heights of Gallipoli. With- 
out counting the cost for a moment, they came 
to the call of the Great Mother, from near and 
far. "They trained themselves, while they 
were training their men." Not for them the 
plenty of guns and shells that now at least 
lessens the hideous sacrifice that war demands; 



58 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

not for them the many protective devices and 
safeguards that the war itself has developed. 
Their young bodies — their precious lives — paid 
the price. And in the Mother-heart of 
England they lie — gathered and secure — for 
ever. 

But let me go a little further with the new 
War Office facts. 

The year 1915 saw great and continuous 
advance. During that year, an average num- 
ber of over a million troops were being trained 
in the United Kingdom, apart from the armies 
abroad. The First, Second, and Third armies 
naturally came off much better than the Fourth 
and Fifth, who yet were being recruited all 
the time. What equipment, clothes, and arms 
there were, the first three armies got; the rest 
had to wait. But all the same, the units of 
these later armies were doing the best they 
could for themselves; nobody stood still. 
And gradually — surely — order was evolved out 
of the original chaos. The Army Orders of 
the past had dropped out of sight with the 
beginning of the war. Everything had to be 
planned anew. The one governing factor was 
the "necessity of getting men to the front at 
the earliest possible moment." Six months 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 59 

courses were laid down for all arms. It was 
very rare, however, that any course could be 
strictly carried out; and after the first three 
armies, the training of the rest seemed, for a 
time, to be all beginnings ! — with the final stage 
farther and farther away. And always the 
same difficulty of guns, rifles, huts, and the 
rest. 

But, like its own tanks, the War Office went 
steadily on, negotiating one obstacle after 
another. Special courses for special subjects 
began to be set up. Soon artillery officers had 
no longer to join their batteries at once on ap- 
pointment; R. E. officers could be given a 
seven weeks' training at Chatham; little 
enough, "for a man supposed to know the use 
and repairs of telephones and telegraphs, or 
the way to build or destroy a bridge, or how 
to meet the countless other needs with which 
a sapper is called upon to deal!" Increasing 
attention was paid to Staff training and Staff 
courses, and insufficient as it all was, for 
months, the general results of this haphazard 
training, when the men actually got into the 
field — all shortcomings and disappointments 
admitted — were nothing short of wonderful. 
Had the Germans forgotten that we are, and 
always have been, a fighting people? That 



60 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

fact, at any rate, was brought home to them 
by the unbroken spirit of the troops who held 
the line in France and Flanders in 1915 against 
all attempts to break through; and at Neuve 
Chapelle, or Loos, or a hundred other minor 
engagements, only wanted numbers and am- 
munition — above all ammunition ! — [to win 
them the full victory they had rightly earned. 

Of this whole earlier stage, the junior subal- 
tern was the leading figure. It was he — let me 
insist upon it anew — whose spirit made the 
new armies. If the tender figure of the Lady 
of the Lamp has become for many of us the 
chief symbol of the Crimean struggle, when 
Britain comes to embody in sculpture or in 
painting that which has touched her most 
deeply in this war, she will choose — surely — 
the figure of a boy of nineteen, laughing, eager, 
undaunted, as quick to die as to live, carrying 
in his young hands the "Luck" of England. 

Then — with the end of 1915, the first stage, 
the elementary stage, of the new Armies 
came to an end. When I stood, in March, 
1916, on the Scherpenberg hill, looking out over 
the salient, the second stage had well begun. 
The Officer Cadet Corps had been formed; 
a lively and continuous intercourse between 
the realities of the front and the training at 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 61 

home had been set up; special schools in all 
subjects of military interest had been founded, 
often, as we have seen, by the zeal of individual 
officers, to be gradually incorporated in the 
Army system. Men insufficiently trained in 
the early months had been given the oppor- 
tunity — which they eagerly took — of beginning 
at the beginning again; correcting mistakes 
and incorporating all the latest knowledge. 
Even a lieutenant-colonel, before commanding 
a battalion, could go to school again; and even 
for officers and men "in rest," there were and 
are, endless opportunities of seeing and learn- 
ing, which few wish to forego. 

And that brings me to what is now shaping 
itself — the final result. The year just passed, 
indeed — from March to March — has prac- 
tically rounded our task — though the "learn- 
ing" of the 'Army is never over! — and has 
seen the transformation — whether temporary 
or permanent, who yet can tell? — of the 
England of 1914, with its zealous mobs of un- 
trained and "tatterdemalion" recruits, into 
a great military power, disposing of armies 
in no whit inferior to those of Germany, and 
bringing to bear upon the science of war — 
now that Germany has forced us to it — the 
best intelligence, and the best character, of the 



62 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

nation. The most insolent of the German 
military newspapers are already bitterly con- 
fessing it. 

My summary — short and imperfect as it 
is — of this first detailed account of its work 
which the War Office has allowed to be made 
public — has carried me far afield. 

The motor has been waiting long at the 
door of the hospitable Headquarters which 
have entertained us ! Let me return to it, — 
to the great spectacle of the Present, after 
this retrospect of the Past. 

Again the crowded roads — the young and 
vigorous troops — the manifold sights illus- 
trating branch after branch of the Army. I 
recall a draught, tired with marching, clamber- 
ing with joy into some empty lorries, and sitting 
there peacefully content, with legs dangling 
and the ever-blessed cigarette for company; 
then an aeroplane-station; then a football- 
field, with a violent game going on; a casualty 
clearing-station, almost a large hospital; an- 
other football-match; a battery of 18-pounders 
on the march; an old French market-town 
crowded with lorries and men. 

In the midst of it D. suddenly draws my 
attention to a succession of great nozzles pass- 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 63 

ing us, with their teams and limber. I have 
stood beside the forging and tempering of their 
brothers in the gun-shops of the north, have 
watched the testing and callipering of their 
shining throats. They are 6-inch naval guns 
on their way to the line — like everything else, 
part of the storm to come. 

And in and out, among the lorries and the 
guns stream the French folk, women, children, 
old men, alert, industrious, full of hope, with 
friendly looks for their allies. Then the town 
passes, and we are out again in the open coun- 
try, leaving the mining village behind. We are 
not very far at this point from* that portion 
of the line which I saw last year under General 
X.'s guidance. But everything looks very 
quiet and rural, and when we emerged on the 
high ground of the school we had come to see, 
I might have imagined myself on a Surrey 
or Hertfordshire common. The officer in charge, 
a "mighty hunter" in civil life, showed us 
his work with a quiet but most contagious 
enthusiasm. The problem that he and his 
colleagues, engaged in similar work in other 
sections of the front, had to solve, was how 
to beat the Germans at their own game of 
"sniping," which cost us so many lives in 
the first year and a half of war; in other 



64 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

words, how to train a certain number of men 
to an art of rifle-shooting, combining the in- 
stincts and devices of a "Pathfinder" with the 
subtleties of modern optical and mechanical 
science. "Don't think of this as meant pri- 
marily to kill," says the Chief of the School, 
as he walks beside me, "it is meant primarily 
to protect. We lost our best men — young and 
promising officers in particular — by the score 
before we learnt the tricks of the German 
"sniper/ and how to meet them." German 
"sniping," as our guide explains, is by no 
means all tricks. For the most part, it means 
just first-rate shooting, combined with the 
trained instinct and fair of the sportsman. 
Is there anything that England and Scotland 
should provide more abundantly ? Still, there 
are tricks, and our men have learnt them. 

Above all, it is a school of observation. 
Nothing escapes the eye or the ear. Every 
point, for instance, connected with our two 
unfamiliar figures, will have been elaborately 
noted by those men on the edge of the hill; 
the officer in charge will presently get a care- 
ful report on us. The little museum which 
stands on the training-ground emphasises this 
point of skilled observation. 

"We teach our men the old great game of 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 65 

war — wit against wit, courage against cour- 
age, life against life. We try many men here, 
and reject a good few. But the men who 
have gone through our training here are valu- 
able, both for attack and defence — above all, 
let me repeat it, they are valuable for pro- 
tection" 

And what is meant by this, I have since 
learnt, in greater detail. Before these schools 
were started, every day saw a heavy toll — 
especially of officers' lives — taken by German 
snipers. Compare with this one of the latest 
records: that out of 15 battalions there were 
only 9 men killed by snipers in three months. 

We leave the hill, half sliding down the 
frozen watercourse that leads to it, and are 
in the motor again, bound for an Army Head- 
quarters. 



IV 

April 14th, 1917. 

Dear Mr. Roosevelt, 

As the news comes flashing in, these April 
days, and all the world holds its breath to hear 
the latest messages from Arras and the Vimy 
ridge, it is natural that in the memory of a 
woman who, six weeks ago, was a spectator — 
before the curtain rose — of the actual scene of 
such events, every incident and figure of that 
past experience, as she looks back upon it, 
should gain a peculiar and shining intensity. 
The battle of the Vimy ridge is clearly going 
to be the second (the first was the German re- 
treat on the Somme) of those "decisive events" 
determining this year the upshot of the war, to 
which the Commander-in-Chief, with so strong 
and just a confidence, directed the eyes of this 
country some three months ago. When I was 
in the neighbourhood of the great battle-field — 
one may say it now ! — the whole countryside 
was one vast preparation. The signs of the 
coming attack were everywhere — troops, guns, 
ammunition, food-dumps, hospitals, air-sta- 
tions — every actor and every property in the 

66 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 67 

vast and tragic play was on the spot, ready for 
the moment and the word. 

Yet, except in the Headquarters and 
Staff-Councils of the Army nobody knew when 
the moment and the word would come, and 
nobody spoke of them. The most careful and 
exact organisation for the great movement was 
going on. No visitor would hear anything of 
it. Only the nameless stir in the air, the faces 
of officers at Headquarters, the general alacrity 
— the endless work everywhere, prophesied the 
great things ahead. Perpetual, highly organ- 
ised, scientific drudgery is three parts of war, 
it seems, as men now wage it. The Army, as 
I saw it, was at work — desperately at work ! — 
but "dreaming on things to come." 

One delightful hour stands out for me in par- 
ticular. The strong, attractive presence of an 
Army Commander, whose name will be for 
ever linked with that of the battle of the Vimy 
ridge, surrounded by a group of distinguished 
officers — a long table, and a too brief stay — 
conversation that carries for me the thrill of 
the actual thing, close by, though it may not 
differ very much from war-talk at home — these 
are the chief impressions that remain. The 
General beside me — with that look in his kind 
eyes which seems to tell of nights shortened by 



68 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

hard work — says a few quietly confident things 
about the general situation, and then we discuss 
a problem which one of the party — not a soldier 
■ — starts. Is it true, or untrue, that long habit- 
uation to the seeing or inflicting of pain and 
death, that the mere sights and sounds of the 
trenches, tend with time to brutalise men and 
will make them callous when they return to 
civil life? Do men grow hard and violent in 
this furnace after a while, and will the national 
character suffer thereby in the future? The 
General denies it strongly. "I see no signs of 
it. The kindness of the men to each other, to 
the wounded, whether British or German, to 
the French civilians, especially the women and 
children, is as marked as it ever was. It is 
astonishing the good behaviour of the men in 
these French towns — it is the rarest thing in 
the world to get a complaint.' ' I ask for some 
particulars of the way in which the British 
Army "runs" the French towns and villages in 
our zone. How is it done ? " It is all summed 
up in three words," says an officer present, "M. 
le Maire !" What we should have done with- 
out the local functionaries assigned by the 
French system to every village and small town, 
it is hard to say. They are generally excellent 
people; they have the confidence of their fellow 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 69 

townsmen, and know everything about them. 
Our authorities on taking over a town or village 
do all the preliminaries through M. le Maire, 
and all goes well. 

The part played, indeed, by these local chiefs 
of the civil population throughout France dur- 
ing the war has been an honourable and arduous 
— in many cases a tragic — one. The murder, 
under the forms of a court-martial, of the Maire 
of Senlis and his five fellow hostages, stands 
out among the innumerable German cruelties 
as one of peculiar horror. Everywhere in the 
occupied departments the Maire has been the 
surety for his fellows, and the Germans have 
handled them often as a cruel boy torments 
some bird or beast he has captured, for the 
pleasure of showing his power over it. From 
the wife of the Maire of an important town in 
Lorraine I heard the story of how her husband 
had been carried off as a hostage for three 
weeks, while the Germans were in occupation. 
Meanwhile German officers were billeted in 
her charming old house. "They used to say 
to me every day with great politeness that they 
hooped my husband would not be shot. 'But 
why should he be shot, monsieur ? He will do 
nothing to deserve it.' On which they would 
shrug their shoulders and say — 'Madame, c'est 



70 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

la guerre ! ' evidently wishing to see me terri- 
fied. But I never gave them that pleasure." 
A long drive home, through the dark and 
silent country. Yet everywhere, one feels the 
presence of the Army Tommy. We draw up to 
look at a sign-post at some cross roads, by the 
light of one of the motor-lamps. Instantly a 
couple of Tommies emerge from the darkness 
and give help. In passing through a village a 
gate suddenly opens and a group of horses 
comes out, led by two men in khaki; or from a 
Y. M. C. A. hut laughter and song float out 
into the night. And soon in these farms and 
cottages everybody will be asleep under the 
guard of the British Army, while twenty miles 
away, in the darkness, t"he guns we saw in the 
morning are endlessly harassing and scourging 
the enemy lines, preparing for the day when 
the thoughts now maturing in the minds of the 
Army Leaders will leap in flame to light. 

To-day we are off for the Somme. I looked 
out anxiously with the dawn, and saw streaks 
of white mist lying over the village, and the sun 
struggling through. But as we start on the 
road to Amiens, the mist, alas ! gains the upper 
hand, and we begin to be afraid that we shall 
not get any of those wide views from the west 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 71 

of Albert over the Somme country which are 
possible in clear weather. 

Again the high upland, and this time three 
Tanks on the road, but motionless, alack ! — the 
nozzles of their machine-guns just visible on 
their great sides. Then, a main road ; if it can 
be called a road since the thaw has been at 
work upon it. Every mile or two, as our 
chauffeur explains, the pave "is all burst up" 
from below, and we rock and lunge through 
holes and ruts that only an Army motor can 
stand. But German prisoners are thick on the 
worst bits, repairing as hard as they can. Was 
it perhaps on some of these men that certain 
of the recent letters that are always coming into 
G. H. Q. have been found? I will quote a 
few of those which have not yet seen the 
light. 

Here are a batch of letters written in Janu- 
ary of this year from Hamburg and its neigh- 
bourhood. 

It is indeed a miserable existence. How will it all end? 
There is absolutely nothing to be got here. Honey costs 6/0 
a pound, goose fat 18/ a pound. Lovely prices, aren't they? 
One cannot do much by way of heating, as there is no coal. 
We can just freeze and starve at home. Everybody is ill. 
All the infirmaries are overflowing. Small-pox has broken 
out. You are being shot at the front, and at home we are 
gradually perishing. 



72 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

. . . On the Kaiser's birthday military bands played 
everywhere. When one passes and listens to this tomfoolery, 
and sees the emaciated and overworked men in war time, 
swaying to the sounds of music, and enjoying it, one's very 
gall rises. Why music? Of course, if times were different, 
one could enjoy music. But to-day! It should be the aim 
of the higher authorities to put an end to this murder. In 
every sound of music the dead cry for revenge. I can assure 
you that it is very surprising that there has not been a single 
outbreak here, but it neither can nor will last much longer. 
How can a human being subsist on ^ lb. of potatoes a day ? 
I should very much like the Emperor to try and live for a 
week on the fare we get. He would then say it is impossible. 
... I heard something this week quite unexpectedly, which, 
although I had guessed it before, yet has depressed me still 
more. However, we will hope for the best. 

You write to say that you are worse off than a beast of bur- 
den. ... I couldn't send you any cakes, as we had no more 
flour. . . . We have abundant bread tickets. From Thurs- 
day to Saturday I can still buy five loaves. . . . My health 
is bad; not my asthma, no, but my whole body is collapsing. 
We are all slowly perishing, and this is what it is all com- 
ing to. 

. . . The outlook here is also sad. One cannot get a bucket 
of coal. The stores and dealers have none. The schools are 
closing, as there is no coal. Soon everybody will be in the 
same plight. Neither coal nor vegetables can be bought. 
Holland is sending us nothing more, and we have none. We 
get 3^ lbs. of potatoes per person. In the next few days 
we shall only have swedes to eat, which must be dried. 

A letter written from Hamburg in February, 
and another from Coblenz are tragic reading: 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 73 

. . . We shall soon have nothing more to eat. We earn no 
money, absolutely none; it is sad but true. Many people are 
dying here from inanition or under-feeding. 

Or take this from Neugersdorf in Saxony : 

We cannot send you any butter, for we have none to eat 
ourselves. For three weeks we have not been able to get 
any potatoes. So we only have turnips to eat, and now they 
are no more to be had. We do not know what we can get for 
dinner this week, and if we settle to get our food at the Public 
Food-Kitchen we shall have to stand two hours for it. 

Here is February once more — one month nearer to peace. 
Otherwise all is the same. Turnips ! Turnips ! Very few 
potatoes, only a little bread, and no thought of butter or meat; 
on the other hand, any quantity of hunger. I understand 
your case is not much better on the Somme. 

Or this from a man of the Ersatz Battalion, 
19th F. A. R., Dresden: 

Since January 16th, I have been called up and put into the 
Foot Artillery at Dresden. On the 16th we were first taken 
to the Quartermaster's Stores, where 2,000 of us had to stand 
waiting in the rain from 2.30 to 6.30. ... On the 23d I was 
transferred to the tennis-ground. We are more than 100 men 
in one room. Nearly all of us have frozen limbs at present. 
The food, too, is bad: sometimes it cannot possibly be eaten. 
Our training also is very quick, for we are to go into the field in 
six weeks. 

Or these from Itzehoe and Hanover: 

Could you get me some silk ? It costs 8s. a metre here. . . . 
To-day, the 24th, all the shops were stormed for bread, and 



74 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

1,000 loaves were stolen from the Bakery. There were several 
other thousand in stock. In some shops the windows were 
smashed. In the grocers* shops the butter barrels were rolled 
into the street. There were soldiers in civilian dress. The 
Mayor wanted to hang them. There are no potatoes this 
week. 

To-day, the 27th, the bakers* shops in the Road 

were stormed. . . . This afternoon the butchers* shops are 
to be stormed. 

If only peace would come soon ! We have been standing to 
for an alarm these last days, as the people here are storming all 
the bakers* shops. It is a semi-revolution. It cannot last 
much longer. 

To such a pass have the Kaiser and the 
Junker party brought their countrymen ! Here, 
no doubt, are some of the recipients of such 
letters among the peaceful working groups in 
shabby green-grey, scattered along the roads 
of France. As we pass, the German N. C. O. 
often looks up to salute the officer who is with 
us, and the general aspect of the men — at any 
rate of the younger men — is cheerfully phleg- 
matic. At least they are safe from the British 
guns, and at least they have enough to eat. 
As to this, let me quote, by way of contrast, a 
few passages from letters written by prisoners 
in a British camp, to their people at home. 
One might feel a quick pleasure in the creature 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 75 

comfort they express, but for the burning mem- 
ory of our own prisoners, and the way in which 
thousands of them have been cruelly ill-treated, 
tormented even, in Germany — worst of all, 
perhaps, by German women. 

The extracts are taken from letters written 
mostly in December and January last. 

(a) . . . Dear wife, don't fret about me, because the 
English treat us very well. Only our own officers (N. C. O.'s) 
treat us even worse than they do at home in barracks; but that 
we're accustomed to. . . . 

(b) . . . I'm now a prisoner in English hands, and I'm 
quite comfortable and content with my lot, for most of my 
comrades are dead. The English treat us well, and everything 
that is said to the contrary is not true. Our food is good. 
There are no meatless days, but we haven't any cigars. . . . 

(c) Written from Hospital, near Manchester. 

. . . I've been a prisoner since October, 1916. . . . I'm 
extremely comfortable here. . . . Considering the times, I 
really couldn't wish you all anything better than to be here too ! 

(d) . . . I am afraid I'm not in a position to send you very 
detailed letters about my life at present, but I can tell you 
that I am quite all right and comfortable, and that I wish 
every English prisoner were the same. Our new Commandant 
is very humane — strict, but just. You can tell everybody 
who thinks differently that I shall always be glad to prove 
that he is wrong. . . . 

... I suppose you are all thinking that we are having a 
very bad time here as prisoners. It's true we have to do 



76 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

without a good many things, but that, after all, one must get 
accustomed to. The English are really good people, which I 
never would have believed before I was taken prisoner. They 
try all they can to make our lot easier for us, and you know 
there are a great many of us now. So don't be distressed for 



X is passed, a large and prosperous town, 
with mills in a hollow. We climb the hill be- 
yond it, and are off on a long and gradual de- 
scent to Amiens. This Picard country pre- 
sents everywhere the same general features 
of rolling downland, thriving villages, old 
churches, comfortable country houses, straight 
roads, and well-kept woods. The battle-fields 
of the Somme were once a continuation of it ! 
But on this March day, the uplands are wind- 
swept and desolate; and chilly white mists curl 
about them, with occasional bursts of pale sun. 
Out of the mist there emerges suddenly an 
anti-aircraft section ; then a great Army Service 
dump; and presently we catch sight of a row 
of hangars and the following notice: "Beware 
of aeroplanes ascending and descending across 
roads." For a time the possibility of charging 
into a biplane gives zest to our progress, as we 
fly along the road which cuts the Aerodrome; 
but, alack ! there are none visible, and we begin 
to drop towards Amiens. 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 77 

Then, outside the town, sentinels stop us — 
French and British; our passes are examined; 
and under their friendly looks — betraying a 
little surprise ! — we drive on into the old streets. 
I was in Amiens, two years before the war, be- 
tween trains, that I might refresh a somewhat 
faded memory of the Cathedral. But not such 
a crowded, such a busy Amiens as this ! The 
streets are so full that we have to turn out of 
the main street, directed by a French military 
policeman, and find our way by a detour to 
the Cathedral. 

As we pass through Amiens arrangements are 
going on for the " taking over" of another large 
section of the French line, south of Albert; as 
far, it is rumoured, as Roye and Lagny. At 
last, with our new armies, we can relieve more 
of the French divisions, who have borne so 
gallantly and for so many months the burden 
of their long line. It is true that the bulk of 
the German forces are massed against the 
British lines, and that in some parts of the cen- 
tre and east, owing to the nature of the ground, 
they are but thinly strung along the French 
front; which accounts, partly, for the dispro- 
portion in the number of kilometres covered 
by each Ally. But, also, we had to make our 
Army; the French, God be thanked, had theirs 



78 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

ready ; and gloriously have they stood the brunt, 
as the defenders of civilisation, till we could 
take our full share. And now, we, who began 
with forty-five kilometres of the battle-line, 
have gradually become responsible for one 
hundred and eighty-five, so that — "At last," 
says a French friend to me in Paris, "our men 
can have a rest ! — some of them for the first 
time. And by Heaven, they've earned it." 

Yet, in this "taking over," there are many 
feelings concerned. For the French poilu, and 
our Tommy, it is mostly the occasion for as 
much fraternisation as their fragmentary 
knowledge of each other's speech allows; the 
Frenchman is proud to show his line, the Brit- 
isher is proud to take it over; there is laughter 
and eager good-will; on the whole it is a red- 
letter day. But, sometimes, there strikes in 
a note "too deep for tears." Here is a frag- 
ment from an account of a "taking over," 
written by an eye-witness: 

Trains of a prodigious length are crawling up a French rail- 
way. One follows so closely upon another that the rear truck 
of the first is rarely out of sight of the engine-driver of the 
second. These trains are full of British soldiers. Most of 
them are going to the front for the first time. They are 
seated anywhere, on the trucks, on the roof — legs dangling 
over the edge — inside, and even over the buffers. Presently 
they arrive at their goal. The men clamber out on to the 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 79 

siding, collect their equipment and are ready for a march up 
country. A few children run alongside them, shouting "An- 
glais ! Anglais !" And some of them take the soldiers' hands 
and walk on with them until they are tired. 

Now the trenches are reached, and the men break into 
single file. But the occasion is not the usual one of taking 
over a few trenches. We are relieving some sixty miles of 
French line. There is, however, no confusion. The right men 
are sent to the right places, and everything is done quietly. It 
is like a great tide sweeping in, and another sweeping out. 
Sixty miles of trenches are gradually changing their nation- 
ality. 

The German, a few yards over the way, knows quite well 
what is happening. A few extra shells whizz by; a trench 
mortar or two splutters a welcome; but it makes little differ- 
ence to the weary German who mans the trenches over against 
him. Only, the new men are fresh and untired, and the Ger- 
man has no ally who can give him corresponding relief. 

It has all been so quietly done! Yet, it is really a great 
moment. The store of man power which Great Britain pos- 
sesses is beginning to take practical effect. The French, who 
held the long lines at the beginning of war, who stood before 
Verdun and threw their legions on the road to Peronne, are 
now being freed, for work elsewhere. They have "carried on " 
till Great Britain was ready, and now she is ready. 

This was more than the beginning of a new tour of duty, 
says another witness. I felt the need of some ceremony and I 
think others felt the need of it too. There were little half 
articulate attempts, in the darkness, of men trying to show 
what they felt — a whisper or two — in the queer jargon that is 
growing up between the two armies. An English sentry 



80 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

mounted upon the fire step, and looked out into the darkness 
beside the Frenchman, and then, before the Frenchman 
stepped down, patted him on the shoulder, as though he 
would say: "These trenches — all right 1 — we'll look after 
them!" 

Then I stumbled into a dug-out. A candle burnt there, and 
a French officer was taking up his things. He nodded and 
smiled. "I go," he said. "I am not sorry, and yet — " He 
shrugged his shoulders. I understood. One is never sorry to 
go, but these trenches — these pieces of France where French- 
men had died — would no longer be guarded by Frenchmen. 

Then he waved his hand round the little dug-out. "We give 
a bit more of France into your keeping." His gesture was 
extravagant and light, but his face was grave as he said it. 
He turned and went out. I followed. He walked along the 
communication trench after his men, and I along the line of 
my silent sentries. I spoke to one or two, and then stood on 
the fire step, looking out into the night. I had the French- 
man's words in my head: "We give a bit more of France into 
your keeping ! " It was not these trenches only, where I stood, 
but all that lay out there in the darkness, which had been 
given into our keeping. Its dangers were ours now. There 
were villages away there in the heart of the night, still unknown 
to all but the experts at home, whose names — like Thiepval 
and Bazentin — would soon be English names, familiar to every 
man in Britain as the streets of his own town. All this France 
had entrusted to our care this night. 

Such were the scenes that were quietly going 
on, not much noticed by the public at home, 
during the weeks of February and March; and 
such were the thoughts in men's minds. How 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 81 

plainly one catches through the words of the 
last speaker an eager prescience of events to 
come ! — the sweep of General Gough of War- 
lencourt and Bapaume — the French reoccu- 
pation of Peronne — as we pass through Amiens. 
One word for the Cathedral, before we leave 
the bustling streets of the old Picard capital. 
This is so far untouched and unharmed, though 
exposed, like everything else behind the front, 
to the bombs of German aeroplanes. The 
great west front has disappeared behind a 
mountain of sand-bags; the side portals are 
protected in the same way, and inside, the 
superb carvings of the choir are buried out of 
sight. But, at the back of the choir, the famous 
weeping cherub sits weeping as before, peace- 
fully querulous. There is something irritating 
in his placid and too artistic grief. Not so is 
"Rachel weeping for her children" in this 
war-ravaged country. Sterner images of Sor- 
row are wanted here — looking out through 
burning eyes for the Expiation to come. 

Then we are off, bound for Albert, though 
first of all for the Headquarters of the particu- 
lar Army which has this region in charge. The 
weather, alack ! is still thick. It is under cover 
of such an atmosphere that the Germans have 



82 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

been stealing away, removing guns and stores 
wherever possible, and leaving rear-guards to 
delay our advance. But when the rear-guards 
amount to some 100,000 men, resistance is 
still formidable, not to be handled with any- 
thing but extreme prudence by those who have 
such vast interests in charge as the Generals 
of the Allies. 

Our way takes us first through a small forest, 
where systematic felling and cutting is going 
on under British forestry experts. The work is 
being done by German prisoners, and we catch 
a glimpse through the trees of their camp of 
huts in a barbed-wire enclosure. Their guards 
sleep under canvas ! . . . And now we are in 
the main street of a large, picturesque village, 
approaching a chateau. A motor-lorry comes 
towards us, driven at a smart pace, and filled 
with grey-green uniforms. Prisoners ! this time 
fresh from the field. We have already heard 
rumours on our way of successful fighting to 
the south. 

The famous Army Commander himself, who 
had sent us a kind invitation to lunch with 
him, is unexpectedly engaged in conference 
with a group of French generals; but there is a 
welcome suggestion that on our way back from 
the Somme he will be free, and able to see me. 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 83 

Meanwhile, we go off to luncheon and much 
talk with some members of the Staff in a house 
on the village street. Everywhere I notice the 
same cheerful, one might even say, radiant 
confidence. No boasting in words, but a con- 
viction that penetrates through all talk that 
the tide has turned, and that however long it 
may take to come fully up, it is we whom it is 
floating surely on to that fortune which is no 
blind hazard, but the child of high faith and 
untiring labour. Of that labour, the Somme 
battle-fields we were now to see will always 
remain in my mind — in spite of ruin, in spite 
of desolation — as a kind of parable in action, 
never to be forgotten. 



April 26th, 1917. 

Dear Mr. Roosevelt, 

Amid the rushing events of these days — 
America rousing herself like an eagle "with 
eyes intentive to bedare the sun" — the steady 
and victorious advance along the whole front 
in France, which, day by day, is changing the 
whole aspect of the war — the Balfour Mission 
— the signs of deep distress in Germany — it is 
sometimes difficult to throw oneself back into 
the mood of even six weeks ago ! History is 
coming so fast off the loom ! And yet six weeks 
ago I stood at the pregnant beginnings of it all, 
when after the winter lull, though Nature in 
the bitter frost and slush of early March 
showed no signs of Spring, everywhere on the 
British front men knew that great things were 
stirring. Before I reached G. H. Q. Field 
Marshal Sir Douglas Haig had already re- 
ported the recapture or surrender of eleven vil- 
lages on the Ancre during February, includ- 
ing Serre and Gommecourt, which had defied 
our efforts in the summer of 1916. That is to 

84 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 85 

say, after three months of trench routine and 
trench endurance imposed by a winter which 
seemed to have let loose every possible misery 
of cold and wet, of storm and darkness, on the 
fighting hosts in France, the battle of the 
Somme had moved steadily forward again 
from the point it had reached in November. 
Only, when the curtain rose on the new scene, 
it was found that during these three months 
strange things had been happening. About 
the middle of November, after General Gough's 
brilliant strokes on the Ancre, which gave us 
St. Pierre-Divion, Beaucourt, and Beaumont 
Hamel, and took us up to the outskirts of 
Grandcourt, the Frankfurter Zeitung wrote: 
"For us Germans the days of the crisis on the 
Somme are over. Let the French and English 
go on sacrificing the youth of their countries 
here. They will not thereby achieve anything 
more." Yet when this was written the Ger- 
man Higher Command was already well aware 
that the battle of the Somme had been won by 
the Allies, and that it would be impossible for 
Germany to hold out on the same ground 
against another similar attack. Three months, 
however, of an extraordinarily hard winter gave 
them a respite, and enabled them to veil the 
facts from their own people. The preparations 



86 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

for retirement, which snow and fog and the long 
nights of January helped them to conceal, in 
part, from our air-service, must have actually 
begun not many weeks after General Gough's 
last successes on the Ancre, when the British 
advance paused, under stress of weather, before 
Grandcourt and Bapaume. So that in the 
latter half of February, when General Gough 
again pushed forward, it was to feel the Ger- 
man line yielding before Jhim; and by the 3rd 
of March, the day of my visit to the Somme, 
it was only a question of how far the Germans 
would go, and what the retreat meant. Mean- 
while, in another section of the line, our own 
plans were maturing, which were to bear fruit 
five weeks later in the brilliant capture of that 
Vimy ridge I had seen on March 2nd, filling the 
blue middle distance from the bare upland of 
Notre Dame de Lorette. If on the Somme the 
anvil was, to some extent, escaping from the 
hammer, in the coming battle of Arras the 
hammer was to take its full revenge. These 
things, however, were still hidden from all but 
the few, and the Germans had not yet begun to 
retire in front of the French line farther south. 
The Somme advance was still the centre of 
things, and Bapaume had not yet fallen. As 
we drove on towards Albert we knew that we 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 87 

should be soon close behind our own guns, and 
within range of the enemy's. 

No one who has seen it in war-time, will ever 
forget the market-place of Albert; the colossal 
heaps of wreck that fill the centre of it; the 
new, pretentious church, rising above the heaps, 
a brick and stucco building of the worst neo- 
Catholic taste, which has been so gashed and 
torn and broken, while still substantially in- 
tact, that all its mean and tawdry ornament 
has disappeared in a certain strange dignity of 
ruin; and last, the hanging Virgin, holding up 
the Babe above the devastation below, in dumb 
protest to God and man. The gilded statue, 
which now hangs at right angles to the tower, 
has, after its original collapse under shell-fire, 
been fixed in this position by the French En- 
gineers; and it is to be hoped that when the 
church comes to be rebuilt, the figure will be 
left as it is. There is something extraordi- 
narily significant and dramatic in its present 
attitude. Whatever artistic defects the statue 
may have are out of sight, and it seems as it 
hangs there passionately hovering, to be the 
very symbol and voice of France calling the 
world to witness. The Albert Bapaume Road, 
that famous road, will be a pilgrims' way for 
generations to come. 



88 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

"To other folk," writes an officer quoted by 
Mr. Buchan in his Battle of the Somme, "and on 
the maps, one place seems just like another, I 
suppose; but to us — La Boisselle and Ovillers 
— my hat ! To walk about in those hells ! I 
went along the 'sunken road' all the way to 
Contalmaison. Talk about sacred ground ! 
The new troops coming up now go barging 
across in the most light-hearted way. It 
means no more to them than the roads behind 
used to mean to us. But when I think how we 
watered every yard of it with blood and sweat ! 
Children might play there now if it didn't look 
so like the aftermath of an earthquake. I 
have a sort of feeling it ought to be marked off 
somehow, a permanent memorial." 

The same emotion as that which speaks in 
this letter — so far, at least, as it can be shared 
by those who had no part in the grim scene 
itself — held us, the first women pilgrims to 
tread these roads and trampled slopes, since 
the battle-storm of last autumn passed over 
them. The sounds of an immortal host seemed 
to rush past us on the air — mingled strangely 
with the memory of hot July days in an Eng- 
lish garden far away, when the news of the 
great advance came thundering in hour by 
hour. 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 89 

" The aftermath of an earthquake ! " Do the 
words express the reality before us as we move 
along the mile of road between Albert and La 
Boisselle? Hardly. The earth shudder that 
visits a volcanic district may topple towns and 
villages into ruins in a few minutes. It does 
not tear and grind and pound what it has over- 
turned, through hour after hour, till there is 
nothing left but mud and dust. Not only all 
vegetation, but all the natural surface of the 
ground here have gone; and the villages are 
churned into the soil, as though some "hundred- 
handed gyas" had been mixing and kneading 
them into a devil's dough. There are no con- 
tinuous shell-holes, as we had expected to see. 
Those belong to the ground farther up the 
ridge, where fourteen square miles are so 
closely shell-pocked that one can hardly drive 
a stake between the holes. But here on the 
way to La Boisselle and Contalmaison, there 
is just the raw tumbled earth, from which all 
the natural covering of grass and trees and all 
the handiwork of man have been stripped and 
torn and hammered away — so that it has be- 
come a great dark wound on the countryside. 

Suddenly, we see gaping lines of old trenches, 
rising on either side of the road, the white chalk 
of the subsoil marking their course. "Brit- 



90 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

ish!" says the officer in front — who was him- 
self in the battle. Only a few steps farther on, 
as it seems, we come to the remains of the 
German front line, and the motor pauses while 
we try to get our bearings. There to the 
south, on our right, and curving eastward, are 
two trench lines perfectly clear still on the 
brown desolation, the British and the enemy 
front lines. From that farther line, at half 
past seven on the summer morning for ever 
blazoned in the annals of our people, the 
British Army went over the parapet to gather 
in the victory prepared for it by the deadly 
strength and accuracy of British guns, made 
possible in its turn by the labour in far-off 
England of millions of workers — men and 
women — on the lathes and in the filling fac- 
tories of these islands. 

We move on up the road. Now we are 
among what remains of the trenches and dug- 
outs, described in Sir Douglas Haig's despatch. 
"During nearly two years' preparations he had 
spared no pains to render these defences im- 
pregnable," says the Commander-in-Chief, and 
he goes on to describe the successive lines of 
deep trenches, the bomb-proof shelters, and the 
wire entanglements with which the war cor- 
respondence of the winter has made us at 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 91 

home — on paper — so familiar. ' ' The numerous 
woods and villages had been turned into ver- 
itable fortresses." The deep cellars in the vil- 
lages, the pits and quarries of a chalk country, 
provided cover for machine-guns and trench- 
mortars. The dugouts were often two stories 
deep, "and connected by passages as much as 
thirty feet below the surface of the ground." 
Strong redoubts, mine-fields, concrete gun- 
emplacements — everything that the best brains 
of the German Army could devise for our de- 
struction — had been lavished on the German 
lines. And behind the first line was a second 
— and behind the second line a third. 

And now here we stand in the midst of what 
was once so vast a system. What remains of 
it — and of all the workings of the German mind 
that devised it? We leave the motor and go 
to look into the dugouts which line the road, 
out of which the dazed and dying Germans 
flung themselves at the approach of our men 
after the bombardment, and then Captain F. 
guides us a little farther to a huge mine crater, 
and we sink into the mud which surrounds it, 
while my eyes look out over what once was 
Ovillers, northward towards Thiepval, and the 
slopes behind which runs the valley of the 
Ancre, up and over this torn and naked land, 



92 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

where the new armies of Great Britain, through 
five months of the deadliest fighting known to 
history, fought their way, yard by yard, ridge 
after ridge, mile after mile, caring nothing for 
pain, mutilation, and death so that England and 
the cause of the Allies might live. " There were 
no stragglers, none /" Let us never forget that 
cry of exultant amazement wrung from the lips 
of an eye-witness, who saw the young, untried 
troops go over the parapet in the July dawn, 
and disappear into the hell beyond. And 
there in the packed graveyards that dot these 
slopes, lie thousands of them in immortal sleep; 
and as the Greeks in after days knew no nobler 
oath than that which pledged a man by those 
who fell at Marathon, so may the memory of 
those who fell here burn ever in the heart of 
England, a stern and consecrating force: 

"Life is but the pebble sunk, 
Deeds, the circle growing !" 

And from the deeds done on this hillside, the suf- 
fering endured, the life given up, the victory 
won, by every kind and type of man within 
the British state — rich and poor, noble and sim- 
ple, street men from British towns, country- 
men from British villages, men from Canadian 
prairies, from Australian and New Zealand 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 93 

homesteads — one has a vision, as one looks on 
into the future, of the impulse given here 
spreading out through history — unquenched 
and imperishable. The fight is not over — the 
victory is not yet — but on the Somme no Eng- 
lish or French heart can doubt the end. 

The same thoughts follow one along the 
sunken road to Contalmaison. Here, first, is 
the cemetery of La Boisselle, this heaped con- 
fusion of sand-bags, of broken and overturned 
crosses, of graves tossed into a common ruin. 
And a little farther are the ruins of Contal- 
maison, where the 3rd Division of the Prussian 
Guards was broken, and 700 of them taken 
prisoners. Terrible are the memories of Con- 
talmaison ! Recall one letter only ! — The letter 
written by a German soldier the day before the 
attack — "Nothing comes to us — no letters. 
The English keep such a barrage on our ap- 
proaches — it is horrible. To-morrow morning 
it will be seven days since this bombardment 
began; we cannot hold out much longer. 
Everything is shot to pieces." And from an- 
other letter — "Every one of us in these five 
days has become years older — we hardly know 
ourselves." It was among these intricate re- 
mains of trenches and dugouts round the frag- 
ments of the old chateau that these things hap- 



94 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

pened. Here — and among those ghastly frag- 
ments of shattered woods that one sees to south 
and east — Mametz, Trones, Delville, High 
Wood — human suffering and heroism, human 
daring and human terror, on one side and on 
the other, reached their height. For centuries 
after the battle of Marathon sounds of armed 
men and horses were heard by night — and to 
pry upon that sacred rendezvous of the souls 
of the slain was frowned on by the gods. Only 
the man who passed through innocently and 
ignorantly, not knowing where he was, could 
pass through safely. And here also, in days 
to come, those who visit these spots in mere 
curiosity, as though they were any ordinary 
sight, will visit them to their hurt. 

So let the first thoughts run which are 
evolved by this brown and torn devastation. 
But the tension naturally passes, and one 
comes back — first — to the victory — to the re- 
sults of all that hard and relentless fighting, 
both for the British and the French forces, on 
this memorable battle-field north and south of 
the Somme. Eighty thousand prisoners — be- 
tween five and six hundred guns of different 
calibres, and more than a thousand machine- 
guns, had fallen to the Allies, in four months 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 95 

and a half. Many square miles of French ter- 
ritory had been recovered. Verdun had been 
relieved. Italy and Russia had been helped by 
the concentration of the bulk of the German 
forces on the western front. The enemy had 
lost at least half a million men; and the Allied 
loss, though great, had been substantially less. 
Our new armies had gloriously proved them- 
selves, and the legend of German invincibility 
was gone. 

So much for the first-fruits. The ultimate 
results are only now beginning to appear, in 
the steady retreat of the German forces, unable 
to stand another such attack, on the same line, 
now that the protection of the winter pause is 
over. "How far are we from our guns?" I 
ask the officer beside me. And as I speak a 
flash to the northeast on the higher ground 
towards Pozieres lights up the grey distance. 
My companion measures the hillside with his 
eyes. "About one thousand yards." And their 
objective now is a temporary German line in 
front of Bapaume. But we shall be in Ba- 
paume in a few days. And then? 

Death — Victory — Work: these are the three 
leading impressions that rise and take sym- 
bolic shape amid these scenes. Let me turn 
now to the last. For any one with the usual 



96 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

allowance of heart and imagination, the first 
thought here must be of the dead — the next, 
of swarming life. For these slopes and roads 
and ruins are again alive with men. Thou- 
sands and thousands of our soldiers are here, 
many of them going up to or coming back 
from the line; but others working — working — 
incessantly at all that is meant by "advance" 
and "consolidation." The transformation of 
a line of battle into an efficient "back of the 
Army" requires, it seems, an amazing amount 
of human energy, contrivance, and endurance. 
And what we see now is, of course, a second or 
third stage. First of all there is the "clearing 
up" of the actual battle-field. For this the 
work of the men now at work here — R. E.'s 
and Labour battalions — is too skilled and too 
valuable. It is done by fatigues and burying- 
parties from the battalions in occupation on 
each captured section. The dead are buried; 
the poor human fragments that remain are 
covered with chlorate of lime; equipments of 
all kinds, the litter of the battle-field, are 
brought back to the salvage dumps, there to be 
sorted and sent back to the bases for repairs. 
Then — or simultaneously — begins the work of 
the engineers and the labour men. Enough 
ground has to be levelled and shell-holes filled 
up for the driving through of new roads and 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 97 

railways, and the provision of places where 
tents, huts, dumps, etc., are to stand. Roughly 
speaking, I see, as I look round me, that a great 
deal of this work is here already far advanced. 
There are hundreds of men, carts, and horses 
at work on the roads, and everywhere one sees 
the signs of new railway-lines, either of the 
ordinary breadth or of the narrow gauge 
needed for the advanced carriage of food and 
ammunition. Here is a great encampment of 
Nissen huts; there fresh preparations for a 
food or an ammunition dump. With one pair 
of eyes, one can only see a fraction of what is 
in truth going on. But the whole effect is one 
of vast and increasing industry — of an inten- 
sity of determined effort which thrills the mind 
hardly less than the thought of the battle-line 
itself. "Yes, war is work," writes an officer 
who went through the Somme fighting — "much 
more than it is fighting. This is one of the 
surprises that the New Army soldiers find out 
here." Yet for the hope of the fighting mo- 
ment men will go cheerfully through any 
drudgery, in the long days before and after, 
and when the fighting comes, will bear them- 
selves to the wonder of the world. 

On we move, slowly, towards Fricourt, the 
shattered remnants of the Mametz wood upon 
our left. More graveyards, carefully tended 



98 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

spaces of peace amid the universal movement. 
And always, on the southern horizon, those 
clear lines of British trenches, whence sprang 
on July 1st the irresistible attack on Montau- 
ban and Mametz. Suddenly ! — over the deso- 
late ground to the west, we see a man hover- 
ing in mid-air, descending on a parachute, 
from a captive balloon that seems to have 
suffered mishap. The small, wavering object 
comes slowly down; we cannot see the land- 
ing; but it is probably a safe one. 

Then we are on the main Albert road again, 
and after some rapid miles, I find myself kindly 
welcomed by one of the most famous leaders 
of the war. There, in a small room, which 
has surely seen work of the first importance 
to our victories on the Somme, a great general 
discusses the situation and the future with 
that same sober and reasoned confidence I 
have found everywhere among the representa- 
tives of our Higher Command. "Are we ap- 
proaching victory ?" "Yes — but it is too soon 
to use the great word itself. Everything is 
going well — but the enemy is still very strong. 
This year will decide it — but may not end it." 

So far my recollections of the 3rd of March. 
But this is now the 26th April, and all the time 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 99 

that I have been writing these recollections, 
thought has been leaping forward to the actual 
present — to the huge struggle now pending 
between Arras and Reims — to the news that 
comes crowding in day by day of the American 
preparations in aid of the Allies — to all that is 
at stake for us and for you. Your eyes are 
now turned like ours to the battle-line in 
France. You triumph — and you suffer with us. 



VI 

May 3rd, 1917. 

Dear Mr. Roosevelt, 

My last letter left me returning to our 
village lodgings under the wing of G. H. Q. 
after a memorable day on the Somme battle- 
fields. That night, the talk at the Visitors' 
Chateau, during and after a very simple 
dinner in an old panelled room, was particu- 
larly interesting and animated. The morning's 
newspapers had just arrived from England, 
with the official communiques of the morning. 
We were pushing nearer and nearer to Ba- 
paume; in the fighting of the preceding day 
we had taken another 128 prisoners; and the 
King had sent his congratulations to Sir 
Douglas Haig and the Army on the German 
withdrawal under "the steady and persistent 
pressure" of the British Army "from care- 
fully prepared and strongly fortified positions — 
a fitting sequel to the fine achievements of my 
Army last year in the battle of the Somme." 
There was also a report on the air-fighting 
and air-losses of February — to which I will 
return. 

100 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 101 

It was, of course, already obvious that the 
German retreat on the Somme was not — so 
far — going to yield us any very large captures 
of men or guns. Prisoners were indeed col- 
lected every day, but there were no "hauls" 
such as, little more than a month after this 
evening of March 3rd, were to mark the very 
different course of the battle of Arras. Dis- 
cussion turned upon the pace of the German 
retreat, and the possible rate of our pursuit. 
"Don't forget," said an officer, "that they are 
moving over good ground, while the pursuit 
has to move over bad ground — roads with 
craters in them, ground so pitted with shell- 
holes that you can scarcely drive a peg between 
them, demolished bridges, villages that give 
scarcely any cover, and so on. The enemy has 
his guns with him — ours have to be pushed up 
over the bad ground; his machine-guns are 
always in picked and prepared positions, ours 
have to be improvised." 

And also — "Don't forget the weather!" 
said another. Every misty day — and there 
were many in February — was very skilfully 
turned to account. Whenever the weather 
conditions made it impossible to use the eyes 
of our air-service, men would say to each other, 
on our side — "He'll go back a lot to-day! — 



102 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

somewhere or other." But in spite of secrecy 
and fog how little respite we had given him! 
The enemy losses in casualties, prisoners, and 
stores during February were certainly consid- 
erable — not to speak of the major loss of all, 
that of the strongly fortified line on which two 
years of the most arduous and ingenious 
labour that even Germany can give had been 
lavished. "And almost everywhere" — writes 
an eye-witness — "he was hustled and harried 
much more than is generally known. As you 
go eastward across the evacuated ground you 
notice everywhere signs of increasing haste 
and flurry, such as the less complete felling of 
trees and telegraph-posts. It was really a 
fine performance for our infantry and our 
cavalry patrols, necessarily unsupported by 
anything like our full artillery strength, to keep 
up the constant pressure they did on an enemy 
who enjoyed almost the full protection of his. 
It was dreadful country to live and fight in, 
after the Germans had gone back over it, 
much worse than anything that troops have to 
face after any ordinary capture of an enemy 
line." 

The fact is that old axioms are being every- 
where revised in the light of this war. In 
former wars, the extreme difficulty of a retreat 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 103 

in the face of the enemy was taken for granted. 
But this war — I am trying to summarise some 
first-hand opinion as it has reached me — has 
modified this point of view considerably. 
We know now that for any serious attack on an 
enemy who has plenty of machine-guns, and 
plenty of successive well-wired positions, a great 
mass of heavy and other artillery is absolutely 
indispensable. And over ground deliberately 
wrecked and obstructed, such artillery must 
take time to bring up. And yet — to repeat — 
how rapidly, how persistently, all difficulties 
considered, to use the King's adjective, has 
the British Army pressed on the heels of the 
retreating enemy ! 

None of the officers with whom I talked, 
believed that anything more could have been 
done by us than was done. "If it had been we 
who were retreating," writes one of them, 
"and the Germans who were pursuing, I do 
not believe they would have pushed us so 
hard, or caused us as much loss, for all their 
pride in their staff work." 

It is, of course, evident from what has hap- 
pened since I parted from my hosts at the 
Chateau, that we have now amply succeeded 
during the last few weeks, in bringing the 
retreating enemy to bay. No more masked 



104 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

withdrawals — no more skilful evasions, for 
either Hindenburg or his Armies ! The vic- 
tories of Easter week on and beyond the Vimy 
ridge, and the renewed British attack of the 
last few days (I am writing on the 1st of May) 
together with the magnificent French advance 
towards Laon, and to the east of Reims have 
been so many fresh and crashing testimonies 
to the vitality and gathering force of the Allied 
armies. What is to be the issue, we wait to 
see. But at last, after the winter lull, it is 
once more joined ; and with such an Army as 
the War Office and the nation together during 
these three years have fashioned to his hand — 
so trained, so equipped, so fired with a common 
and inflexible spirit — Sir Douglas Haig and his 
lieutenants will not fail the hopes of Great 
Britain, of France — and of America I 

At the beginning of March, these last words 
could not have been added. There was an 
American professor not far from me at dinner, 
and we discussed the "blazing indiscretion" 
of Herr Zimmerman's Mexican letter. But 
he knew no more than I. Only I remember 
with pleasure the general tone of all the con- 
versation about America that I either engaged 
in, or listened to, at Headquarters just a month 
before the historic meeting of Congress. It 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 105 

was one of intelligent sympathy with the diffi- 
culties in your way, coupled with a quiet con- 
fidence that the call of civilisation and human- 
ity would very soon — and irrevocably — decide 
the attitude of America towards the war. 

The evening at the Chateau passed only too 
quickly, and we were sad to say good-bye, 
though it left me still the prospect of further 
conversation with some members of the In- 
telligence staff on my return journey from Paris 
and those points of the French line for which, 
thanks to the courtesy of the French Head- 
quarters, I was now bound. 

The last night under the little schoolmis- 
tress's quiet roof, amid the deep stillness of 
the village was a wakeful one for me. The 
presence of the New Armies, as of some vast, 
impersonal, and yet intensely living thing, 
seemed to be all around me. First, as an 
organisation, as the amazing product of Eng- 
lish patriotic intelligence devoted to one sole 
end, the defence of civilisation against the 
immoral attack of the strongest military ma- 
chine in the world. My mind was full of the 
sights and sounds of the preceding days, and 
the Army appeared to me, not only as the 
mighty instrument for war which it already 



106 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

is, but as a training-school for the Empire, 
likely to have incalculable effect upon the 
future. 

How much I have heard of training since 
my arrival in France ! It is not a word that 
has been so far representative of our English 
temper. Far from it. The central idea of 
English life and politics, said Mr. Bright, 
"is the assertion of personal liberty." It was, 
I suppose, this assertion of personal liberty 
which drove our extreme Liberal wing before 
the war, into that determined fighting of the 
Naval^ and Military estimates, year after year, 
that determined hatred of anything that looked 
like "militarism," and that constant belittle- 
ment of the soldier and his profession, which 
so nearly handed us over, for lack of a reason- 
able "militarism," to the tender mercies of 
the German variety. 

But years ago Matthew Arnold dared to say, 
in face of the general British approval of Mr. 
Bright, that there is after all something greater 
than the "assertion of personal liberty" — 
than the freedom to "do as you like;" and 
he put forward against it the notion of "the 
nation in its collected and corporate character 
controlling the individual will in the name of 
an interest wider than that of individuals." 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 107 

What he had in view was surely just what 
we are witnessing in Great Britain to-day — 
what we are about to witness in your own 
country — a nation becoming the voluntary 
servant of an idea — and for that idea sub- 
mitting itself to forms of life quite new to it, 
and far removed from all its ordinary habits; 
giving up the freedom to do as it likes ; accept- 
ing the extremities of discomfort, hardship, and 
pain — death itself — rather than abandon the 
idea; and so putting itself to school, resolutely 
and of its own free will, that when its piece 
of self-imposed education is done, it can no 
more be the same as it was before, than the 
youth who has yielded himself loyally to the 
pounding and stretching of any strenuous dis- 
cipline, intellectual or physical. 

Training — "askesis" — with either death, or 
the loss of all that makes honourable life, as 
the ultimate sanction behind the process, that 
is the present preoccupation of this nation in 
arms. Even the football games I saw going 
on in the course of our drive to Albert, were 
all part of this training. They are no mere 
amusement, though they are amusement. 
They are part of the system by which men 
are persuaded — not driven — to submit them- 
selves to a scheme of careful physical training, 



108 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

even in their times of rest; by which they find 
themselves so invigorated that they end by 
demanding it. And as for the elaboration of 
everything else in this frightful art of war, 
the ever-multiplying staff courses, the bomb- 
ing and bayonet schools, the special musketry 
and gas schools, the daily and weekly develop- 
ment of aviation, the technical industry and 
skill both among the gunners abroad and the 
factory workers at home, which has now made 
our artillery the terror of the German Army — 
a woman can only realise it with a shudder, 
and find comfort in two beliefs — first, that the 
whole horrible process of war has not brutalised 
the British soldier (you remember the Army 
Commander whom I quoted in an earlier 
letter!) — that he still remains human and 
warmhearted through it all, 'protected morally 
by the ideal he willingly serves ; and secondly, 
in the conviction that this relentless struggle 
is the only means that remains to us of so 
chaining up the wild beast of war, as the Ger- 
mans have let it loose upon the world, that 
our children and grandchildren, at least, shall 
live in peace, and have time given them to 
work out a more reasonable scheme of things. 
But, at any rate, we have gone a long way 
from the time when Matthew Arnold, talking 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 109 

with "the manager of the Clay cross works 
in Derbyshire," during the Crimean War, 
"when our want of soldiers was much felt 
and some people were talking of conscription," 
was told by his companion that "sooner than 
submit to conscription the population of that 
district would flee to the mines, and lead a sort 
of Robin Hood life under ground." An illumi- 
nating passage, in more ways than one, by the 
way, as contrasted with the present state of 
things ! — since it both shows the stubbornness 
of the British temper in defence of "doing as 
it likes," when no spark of an ideal motive 
fires it, and also brings out its equal stubborn- 
ness to-day in support of a cause which it 
feels to be supreme over the individual interest 
and will. 

But the stubbornness, the discipline, the 
sacrifice of the Armies in the field is not all 
we want. The stubbornness of the nation at 
home, of the men and the women, is no less 
necessary to the great end. In these early 
days of March, every week's news was bringing 
home to England the growing peril of the 
submarine attack. Would the married women, 
the elder women of the nation, rise to the 
demand for personal thought and saving, for 
training in the matter of food, with the same 



110 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

eager good-will as thousands of the younger 
women had shown in meeting the Armies' 
demand for munitions ? For the women heads 
of households have it largely in their hands. 

The answer, at the beginning of March, was 
matter for anxiety. It is still matter for 
anxiety now — at the beginning of May. 

Let me, however, return for a little to the 
Army. What would this marvellous organisa- 
tion, which England has produced in three 
years, avail us without the spirit in it? — the 
body without the soul? All through these 
days I have been conscious in the responsible 
men I have been meeting of ideals of which no 
one talks — except when, on very rare occasions, 
it happens to be in the day's work like any- 
thing else to talk of ideals — but which are, 
in fact, omnipresent. 

I find, for instance, among my War Office 
Notes, a short address given in the ordinary 
course of duty by an unnamed Commandant 
to his officer-cadets. It appears here in its 
natural place just as part of the whole — 
revealing for a moment the thoughts which 
constantly underlie it: 

Believe me when I tell you that I have never found an 
officer who worked, who did not come through. Only ill- 
health and death stand in your way. The former you can 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 111 

guard against in a great measure. The latter comes to us 
all, and for a soldier, a soldier's death is the finest of all. Fear 
of death does not exist for the man who has led a good and 
honest life. You must discipline your bodies and your minds — 
your bodies by keeping them healthy and strong — your minds 
by prayer and thought. 

As to the relation between officer and men, 
that also is not talked about much; except 
in its more practical and work-a-day aspects — 
the interest taken by officers in the men's 
comfort and welfare, their readiness to share 
in the men's games and amusements and so on. 
And no one pretends that the whole British 
Army is an army of "plaster saints," that 
every officer is the "little father" of his men, 
and all relations ideal. 

But what becomes evident as one penetrates 
a little nearer to the great organism, is a sense 
of passionate responsibility in all the finer 
minds of the Army towards their men, a readi- 
ness to make any sacrifice for them, a deep and 
abiding sense of their sufferings and dangers, of 
all that they are giving to their country. 
How this comes out again and again in the 
innumerable death-stories of British officers, 
those few words that commemorate them in 
the daily newspapers ! And how evident is 
the profound response of the men to such a 



112 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

temper in their officers ! There is not a day's 
action in the field — I am but quoting the eye- 
witnesses — that does not bring out such facts. 
Let a senior officer — an "old and tried soldier" 
— speak. He is describing a walk over a 
battle-field on the Ancre after one of our vic- 
tories there last November: 

It is a curious thing to walk over enemy trenches that I 
have watched like a tiger for weeks and weeks. But what of 
the boys who took those trenches with their eleven rows of 
barbed wire in front of them? I don't think I ever before 
to-day rated the British soldier at his proper value. His 
sufferings in this weather are indescribable. When he is not 
in the trenches his discomforts are enough to kill any ordinary 
mortal. When he is in the trenches it is a mixture between 
the North Pole and Hell. And yet when the moment comes 
he jumps up, and charges at the impossible, and conquers it ! 
Some of the poor fellows who lay there as they fell looked 
to me absolutely noble, and I thought of their families who 
were aching for news of them, and hoping against hope that 
they would not be left unburied in their misery. 

All the loving and tender thoughts that are lavished on 
them are not enough. There are no words to describe the 
large hearts of these men. God bless 'em. And what of the 
French on whose soil they lie? Can they ever forget the 
blood that is mingled with their own? I hope not. I don't 
think England has ever had as much cause to be proud as 
she has to-day. 

Ah! — such thoughts and feelings cut deep. 
They would be unbearable, but for the saving 
salt of humour in which this whole great gather- 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 113 

ing of men, so to speak, moves suspended, as 
though in an atmosphere. It is everywhere. 
Coarse or refined, it is the universal protec- 
tion, whether from the minor discomforts, or 
the more frightful risks of war. Volumes 
could be filled — have already been filled with 
it — volumes to which your American soldier 
when he gets to France in his thousands, will 
add considerably — pages all his own ! I take 
this touch in passing from a recent letter: 

"A sergeant in my company," writes a 
young officer, "was the other day buried by 
a shell. He was dug out with difficulty. As 
he lay, not seriously injured, but sputtering 
and choking, against the wall of the trench 
his C. O. came by. 'Well, so-and-so — awfully 
sorry! — can I do anything for you?' 'Sir,' 
said the sergeant, with dignity, still struggling 
out of the mud — 'I want a separate peace !" 

And here is another incident that has just 
come across me. Whether it is Humour or 
Pathos I do not know. In this scene they are 
pretty close together — the great Sisters! A 
young flying officer, in a night attack, was hit 
by a shrapnel bullet from below. He thought 
it had struck his leg, but was so absorbed in 
dropping his bombs and bringing down his 
machine safely, that although he was aware 



114 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

of a feeling of faintness, he thought no more 
of it, till he had landed in the aerodrome. 
Then it was discovered that his leg had been 
shot away, was literally hanging by a shred 
of skin, and how he had escaped bleeding 
to death nobody could quite understand. As 
it was, he had dropped his bombs, and he in- 
sisted on making his report in hospital. He 
recovered from the subsequent operation, and 
in hospital, some weeks afterwards, his C. O. 
appeared with the news of his recommenda- 
tion for the D. S. O. The boy, for he was 
little more, listened with eyes of amused in- 
credulity, opening wider and wider as the 
colonel proceeded. When the communica- 
tion was over, and the CO., attributing the 
young man's silence to weakness, or grateful 
emotion, had 'passed on, the nurse beside the 
bed saw the patient bury his head in the pil- 
low with a queer sound of exasperation, and 
caught the words — "I call it perfectly child- 
ish r 

That an act so simple, so all in the bargain, 
should have earned the D. S. O. seemed in the 
eyes of the doer, to degrade the honour ! 

With this true tale I have come back to a 
recollection of the words of the flying officer 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 115 

in charge of the aerodrome mentioned in my 
second letter, after he had described to me 
the incessant raiding and fighting of our air- 
men behind the enemy lines. 

"Many of them don't come back. What 
then ? They will have done their job." 

The report which reaches the Chateau on 
our last evening illustrates this casual remark. 
It shows that 89 machines were lost during 
February, 60 of them German. We claimed 
41 of these, and 23 British machines were 
"missing" or "brought down." 

But as I write the concluding words of this 
letter (May 3rd) a far more startling report — 
that for April — lies before me. "There has 
not been a month of such fighting since the 
war began, and the losses have never reached 
such a tremendous figure" — says the Times. 
The record number so far was that for Sep- 
tember, 1916, in the height of the Somme 
fighting — 322. But during April, according 
to the official reports, "the enormous number 
of 717 aeroplanes were brought to earth as 
the result of air-fights or by gun-fire." Of 
these 369 were German — 269 of them brought 
down by the British — and 98 by the French. 
The British lost 147; the French and Belgian, 
if the German claims can be trusted, 201. 



116 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

It is a terrible list, and a terrible testimony 
to the extreme importance and intensity of the 
air-fighting now going on. How few of us, 
except those who have relatives or dear friends 
in the air-service, realise at all the conditions 
of this fighting — its daring, its epic range, its 
constant development ! 

All the men in it are young. None of them 
can have such a thing as a nerve. Any one 
who betrays the faintest suspicion of one in 
his first flights, is courteously but firmly re- 
turned to his regiment. In peace, the airman 
sees this solid earth of ours as no one else sees 
it; and in war he makes acquaintance by day 
and night with all its new and strange aspects, 
amid every circumstance of danger and ex- 
citement, with death always at hand, his life 
staked, not only against the enemy and all his 
devices on land and above it, but against wind 
and cloud, against the treacheries of the 
very air itself. In the midst of these con- 
ditions, the fighting airman shoots, dodges, 
pursues, and dives, intent only on one thing, 
the destruction of his enemy, while the ob- 
server photographs, marks his map with ev- 
ery gun-emplacement, rail way -station, dump of 
food or ammunition, unconcerned by the flying 
shells or the strange dives and swoops of the 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 117 

machine. But apart from active fighting, 
take such a common experience as what is 
called "a long reconnaissance." Pilot and 
observer receive their orders to reconnoitre 
"thoroughly" a certain area. It may be 
winter, and the cold at the height of many 
thousand feet may be formidable indeed. No 
matter. The thing is done, and after hours in 
the freezing air, the machine makes for home; 
through a winter evening, perhaps, as we saw 
the two splendid biplanes, near the northern 
section of the line, sailing far above our heads 
into the sunset, that first day of our journey. 
The reconnaissance is over, and here is the 
first-hand testimony of one who has taken 
part in many, as to what it means in endurance 
and fatigue: 

"Both pilot and observer are stiff with the 
cold. In winter it is often necessary to help 
them out of the machine, and attend to the 
chilled parts of the body to avoid frost-bite. 
Their faces are drawn with the continual strain. 
They are deaf from the roar of the engine. 
Their eyes are bloodshot, and their whole 
bodies are racked with every imaginable ache. 
For the next few hours they are good for 
nothing but rest, though sleep is generally 
hard to get. But before turning in, the ob- 



118 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

server must make his report and hand it in to 
the proper quarter." 

So much for the flights which are rather for 
observation than fighting, though fighting 
constantly attends them. But the set battles 
in the air, squadron with squadron, man with 
man, the bombers in the centre, the fighting 
machines surrounding and protecting them, 
are becoming more wonderful and more com- 
plicated every month. "You'll see — " I recall 
once more the words of my Flight Commander, 
spoken amid the noise and movement of a 
score of practising machines, five weeks be- 
fore the battle of Arras — "when the great 
move begins we shall get the mastery again, 
as we did on the Somme." 

Ask the gunners in the batteries of the 
April advance as they work below the signalling 
planes ! — ask the infantry whom the gunners 
so marvellously protect, as to the truth of the 
prophecy. 

"Our casualties are really light," writes an 
officer in reference to some of the hot fighting 
of the past month. Thanks, apparently, to 
the ever-growing precision of our artillery 
methods; which again depend on aeroplane 
and balloon information. So it is that the 
flying forms in the upper air become for the 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 119 

soldier below so many symbols of help and 
protection. He is restless when they are not 
there. 

But the night in the quiet village wears 
away. To-morrow, we shall be flying through 
the pleasant land of France, bound for Paris 
and Lorraine. For I am turning now to a 
new task. On our own line, I have been 
trying to describe for those who care to listen 
the crowding impressions left on a woman 
witness by the huge development in the last 
twelve months of the British military effort 
in France. Other phases of our national 
effort remain to be sketched. But now, as I 
go forward into this beautiful country which 
I have loved next to my own all my life, there 
are new purposes in my mind, and three mem- 
orable words in my ears: 

" Reparation — Restitution — Guarantees I " 



VII 

May 10th, 1917. 

Dear Colonel Roosevelt, 

We are then, for a time, to put France, and 
not the British line, in the forefront of these 
later letters. For when I went out on this 
task, as I think you know, I had two objects 
in mind — intimately connected. The first was 
to carry on that general story of the British 
effort, which I began last year under your in- 
spiration, down to the opening of this year's 
campaign. And the second was to try and 
make more people in this country, and more 
people in America, realise — as acutely and 
poignantly as I could — what it is we are really 
fighting for; what is the character of the 
enemy we are up against; what are the suffer- 
ings, outrages, and devastations which have 
been inflicted on France, in particular, by the 
wanton cruelty and ambition of Germany; 
for which she herself must be made to suffer 
and pay, if civilisation and freedom are to 
endure. 

With this second intention I was to have 
combined, by the courtesy of the French Head- 

120 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 121 

quarters, a visit to certain central portions of 
the French line, including Soissons, Reims, and 
Verdun. But by the time I reached France 
the great operations that have since marked 
the Soissons-Reims front were in active prepa- 
ration; roads and motor-cars were absorbed 
by the movements of troops and stores ; Reims 
and Verdun were under renewed bombardment, 
and visits to this section of the French line 
were entirely held up. The French authori- 
ties, understanding that I chiefly wished to see 
for myself some of the wrecked and ruined vil- 
lages and towns dealt with in the French offi- 
cial reports, suggested first Senlis and the 
battle-field of the Ourcq, and then Nancy, the 
ruined villages of Lorraine, and that portion 
of their eastern frontier line where, simultane- 
ously with the battle of the Marne, General 
Castelnau directed from the plateau of Amance 
and of the Grand Couronne, that strong de- 
fence of Nancy which protected the French 
right, and has balked all the German attempts 
to turn it. 

Meanwhile the German retreat south of the 
Somme and in front of the French line was not 
yet verified, and the worst devastation of the 
war — the most wanton crime, perhaps, that 
Germany has so far committed — was not yet 



122 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

accomplished. I had left France before it was 
fully known, and could only realise by hot 
sympathy from a distance the passionate thrill 
of fury and wild grief which swept through 
France when the news began to come in from 
the evacuated districts. British correspon- 
dents, with the advancing armies of the Allies, 
have seen deeds of barbarism which British 
eyes and hearts will never forget, and have 
sent the news of them through the world. The 
destruction of Coucy and Ham, the ruin and 
plunder of the villages, the shameless loot 
everywhere, the hideous ill-treatment of the 
country folk, the deportation of boys and girls, 
the massacre of the fruit-trees — these things 
have gone deep into the very soul of France — 
except in the minds of a few incorrigible fa- 
natics — burning away whatever foolish "pa- 
cificism" was there, and steeling the mind and 
will of the nation afresh to that victory which 
can alone bring expiation, punishment — and a 
peace worth the name. But, everywhere, the 
ruins with which northern, central, and eastern 
France are covered, whether they were caused 
by the ordinary processes of war, or not, are 
equally part of the guilt of Germany. In the 
country which I saw last year on the Belgian 
border, from the great phantom of Ypres down 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 123 

to Festubert, the ravage is mainly the ravage 
of war. Incessant bombardment from the 
trench-lines has crumbled village after village 
into dust, or gashed the small historic towns 
and the stately country houses. There is no 
deliberate use of torch and petrol as in the 
towns farther south and east. Ypres, however, 
was deliberately shelled into fragments day 
after day; and Arras is only a degree less care- 
fully ruined. And whatever the military pre- 
text may be, the root question remains: "Why 
are the Germans in France at all?" What 
brought them but their own determination, 
in the words of the secret Report of 1913, 
printed in the French Yellow Book, "to 
strengthen and extend 'Deutschtum' (Ger- 
manism) throughout the entire world." Ev- 
ery injury that poor France in self-defence, 
or the Allies at her side, are forced to inflict 
on the villages and towns which express and 
are interwoven with the genius of her race, is 
really a German crime. There is no forgive- 
ness for what Germany has done — none ! She 
has tried to murder a people; and but for the 
splendid gifts of that people, she would have 
achieved her end. 

Perhaps the tragedy of what is to be seen 
and heard at Senlis, on the battle-grounds of 



124 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

the Ourcq, and in the villages of Lorraine, was 
heightened for me by the beauty of the long 
drive south from the neighbourhood of G. H. Q. 
— some hundred and forty miles. It was a 
cold but clear March day. We had but parted 
from snow a little while, and we were soon to 
find it again. But on this day, austerely 
bright, the land of France unrolled before us 
its long succession of valley and upland, up- 
land and valley. Here, no trace of the in- 
vader; generally speaking, no signs of the 
armies, for our route lay, on an average, some 
forty miles behind the line. All was peace, 
solitude even, for the few women, old men, and 
boys on the land scarcely told in the landscape. 
But all was rich in the signs and suggestions 
of an old and very human civilisation — farms, 
villages, towns, the carefully tended woods, 
the straight and stately roads, the village 
churches. 

We stopped here and there on the way — I 
remember a puncture somewhere making a 
couple of hours' delay somewhere north of 
Beauvais — and found ourselves talking in small 
hot rooms with peasant families of all ages and 
stages, from the blind old grandmother, like 
a brooding Fate in the background, to the last 
toddling baby. How friendly they were, in 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 125 

their own self-respecting way — the grave-faced 
elder women, the young wives, the children. 
The strength of the family in France seems to 
me still overwhelming — would we had more of 
it left in England ! The prevailing effect was 
of women everywhere carrying on — making no 
parade of it, being indeed accustomed to work, 
and familiar with every detail of the land; 
having merely added the tasks of their hus- 
bands and sons to their own, and asking no 
praise for it. The dignity, the essential re- 
finement and intelligence — for all their homely 
speech — of these solidly built, strong-faced 
women, in the central districts of France, is 
still what it was when George Sand drew them 
nearly a hundred years ago. 

Then darkness fell, and in darkness we went 
through an old, old town where are the French 
General Headquarters. Sentries challenged us 
to right and left, and sent us forward again 
with friendly looks. The day had been very 
long, and presently as we approached Paris I 
fell asleep in my corner, only to be roused 
with a start by a glare of lights and more sen- 
tries. The harrier e of Paris ! — shining out into 
the night. 

Two days in Paris followed; every hour 
crowded with talk and the vivid impressions 



126 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

of a moment when from beyond Compiegne 
and Soissons — some sixty miles from the Boule- 
vards — the French airmen flying over the Ger- 
man lines were now bringing back news every 
morning and night of fresh withdrawals, fresh 
villages burning, as the sullen enemy relaxed 
his hold. 

On the third, a most courteous and able 
official of the French Foreign Office, took us 
in charge, and we set out for Senlis on a morn- 
ing chill and wintry indeed, but giving little 
sign of the storm it held in leash. 

To reach Senlis one must cross the military 
enceinte of Paris. Many visitors from Paris 
and other parts of France, from England, or 
from America, have seen by now the wreck of 
its long principal street, its pleasant villas and 
historic buildings, and have talked with the 
Abbe Dourlent, the Archipretre of the Cathe- 
dral, whose story often told has lost but little 
of its first vigour and simplicity, to judge at 
least by its effect on two of his latest visitors. 
We took the great northern road out of Paris, 
which passes scenes memorable in the War of 
1870. On both sides of us, at frequent inter- 
vals, across the flat country, were long lines of 
trenches and belts of barbed wire, most of 
them additions to the defences of Paris, since 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 127 

the battle of the Marne. It is well to make 
assurance doubly sure! But although as we 
entered the Forest of Chantilly the German 
line was no more than some thirty-odd miles 
away, and since the battle of the Aisne, two 
and a half years ago, it had run practically as 
it still ran in those early days of last March, 
the notion of any fresh attack on Paris seemed 
the merest dream. It is indeed a striking 
testimony to the power of the modern defen- 
sive — this absolute security in which Paris 
and its neighbourhood has lived and moved 
with — up to a few weeks ago — the German 
batteries no farther off than the suburbs of 
Soissons. How good to remember, as one 
writes, all that has happened since I was in 
Senlis! — and the greater distance that now 
divides the German hosts from the prize on 
which they had set their hearts. 

How fiercely they had set their hearts on it, 
the old Cure of Senlis was to make us realise 
anew. 

One enters Senlis from Paris by the main 
street, the Rue de la Republique, which the 
Germans deliberately burned on the 2nd and 
3rd of September, 1914, and we moved slowly 
along it through the blackened ruins of houses 
large and small, systematically fired by the 



128 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

German petroleurs, in revenge for a supposed 
attack by civilians upon the entering German 
troops. Les civiles out tires, it is the universal 
excuse for these deeds of wanton barbarism, 
and for the hideous cruelties to men, women, 
and children that have attended them — begin- 
ning with that incident which first revealed to 
a startled world the true character of the men 
directing the German Army — the burning and 
sack of Lou vain. It is to be hoped that re- 
newed and careful investigation will be made 
(much preliminary inquiry has already, of 
course, taken place) , after the war, into all these 
cases. My own impression from what I have 
heard, seen, and read — for what it may be 
worth — is that the plea is almost invariably 
false; but that the state of panic and excite- 
ment into which the German temperament falls, 
with extraordinary readiness, under the strain 
of battle, together with the drunkenness of 
troops traversing a rich wine-growing country, 
have often accounted for an honest, but quite 
mistaken, belief in the minds of German sol- 
diers; without excusing, at all, the deeds to 
which it led. Of this abnormal excitability the 
old Cure of Senlis gave one or two instances 
which struck me. 

We came across him by chance in the Cathe- 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 129 

dral — the beautiful Cathedral I have heard 
Walter Pater describe in my young Oxford days, 
as one of the loveliest and gracefulest things in 
French Gothic. Fortunately, though the slen- 
der belfry and the roof were repeatedly struck 
by shrapnel in the short bombardment of the 
town, no serious damage was done. We wan- 
dered round the church alone, delighting our 
eyes with the warm golden white of the stone, 
the height of the grooved arches, the flaming 
fragments of old glass, when we saw the figure 
of an old priest come slowly down the aisle, 
his arms folded. He looked at us rather 
dreamily and paused. Our guide, Monsieur 
P., followed and spoke to him: "Monsieur, 
you are the Abbe Dourlent?" "I am, sir; 
what can I do for you?" Something was said 
about English ladies, and the Cure courteously 
turned back. "Will the ladies come into the 
Presbytere?" We followed him across the 
small cathedral square to the old house in 
which he lived — and were shown into a bare 
dining-room, with a table, some chairs, and a 
few old religious engravings on the walls. He 
offered us chairs and sat down himself. 

"You would like to hear the story of the 
German occupation?" He thought a little 
before beginning, and I was struck with his 



130 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

strong, tired face, the powerful mouth and jaw, 
and, above them, eyes which seemed to have 
lost the power of smiling, though I guessed them 
to be naturally full of a pleasant shrewdness, 
of what the French call malice, which is not 
the English "malice." He was rather difficult 
to follow here and there, but from his spoken 
words and from a written account he placed in 
my hands, I put together the following story: 

"It was the 30th of August, 1914, when the 
British General Staff arrived in Senlis — that 
same evening they left it for Dammartin. All 
day, and the next two days, French and Eng- 
lish troops passed through the town. What 
was happening? Would there be no battle in 
defence of Paris — only forty-four kilometres 
away? Wednesday, the 2nd of September — 
that was the day the guns began — our guns 
and theirs, to the north of Senlis. But in the 
course of the day we knew there would be no 
battle between us and Paris. The French 
troops were going — the English were going. 
They left us — marching eastward. Our hearts 
were very sore as we saw them go. 

"Two o'clock on Wednesday the first shell 
struck the Cathedral. I had just been to the 
top of the belfry to see, if I could, from what 
direction the enemy was coming. The bom- 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 131 

bardment lasted an hour and a half. At 
four o'clock they entered. If you had seen 
them!" 

The old Cure raised himself on his seat, try- 
ing to imitate the insolent bearing of the Ger- 
man cavalry as they led the way through the 
old town which they imagined would be the 
last stage on the way to Paris. 

"They came in shouting * Paris I Nach 
Paris I 9 maddened with excitement. They 
were all singing — they were like men beside 
themselves." 

"What did they sing, Monsieur le Cur6? 
The 'Wacht am Ehein'— 'Deutschland iiber 
Alles ?'" " Oh, no, Madame, not at all. They 
sang hymns — it was an extraordinary sight. 
They seemed possessed. They were certain 
that in a few hours they would be in Paris. 
They passed through the town, and then just 
south of the town they stopped. Our people 
show the place. It was the nearest they ever 
got to Paris. 

"Presently an officer, with an escort, a gen- 
eral apparently, rode through the town, pulled 
up at the H6tel de Ville, and asked for the 
Maire — angrily, like a man in a passion. But 
the Maire — Mons. Odent — was there, waiting, 
on the steps of the Hotel de Ville. 



132 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

"Monsieur Odent was my friend — he gave 
me his confidence. He had resisted his nomi- 
nation as Mayor as long as he could, and ac- 
cepted it only as an imperative duty. He 
was an employer whom his workmen loved. 
One of them used to say: 'When one gets 
into M. Odent's employ, one lives and dies 
there.' Just before the invasion he took his 
family away. Then he came back, with the 
presentiment of disaster. He said to me: 'I 
persuaded my wife to go. It was hard. We 
are much attached to each other — but now I 
am free ready for all that may come.' 

"Well, the German general said to him 
roughly: 

"'Is your town quiet, can we circulate 
safely ? ' 

"Mons. Odent said: 'Yes. There is no 
quieter town in France than Senlis.' 

"'Are there still any soldiers here?' 

"Mons. Odent had seen the French troops 
defiling through the town all the morning. The 
bombardment had made it impossible to go 
about the streets. As far as he knew there 
were none left. He answered: 'No.' 

"He was taken off in the officers' car, to the 
Hotel, and told to order a dinner for thirty, 
with ice and champagne. Then his secretary 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 133 

joined him and proposed that the adjoints, or 
Mayor's assistants, should be sent for. 

"'No,' said M. Odent, 'one victim is enough.' 
You see he foresaw everything. We all knew 
what had happened in Belgium and the Ar- 
dennes. 

"The German officer questioned him again: 

"'Why have your people gone? — why are 
these houses, these shops, shut? There must 
be lights everywhere 1 — all through the night.' 

"Suddenly — shots! — in the Rue de la Re- 
publique. In a few seconds there was a furious 
fusillade, accompanied by the rattle of ma- 
chine-guns. The officer sprang up. 

"'So this is your quiet town, Monsieur le 
Maire ! I arrest you, and you shall answer 
with your life for the lives of my soldiers.' 

"Two men with revolvers were set to guard 
him. The officer himself presently took him 
outside the town, and left him under guard, at 
the little village of Poteau. 

"What had happened? Unluckily for Sen- 
lis and M. Odent, some of the French rear- 
guard — infantry stragglers, and a small party 
of Senegalese troops — were still in the southern 
quarter of the town when the Germans entered. 
They opened fire from a barrack near the Paris 
entrance, and a sharp engagement followed 



134 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

which lasted several hours, with casualties on 
both sides. The Germans got the better, and 
were then free to wreak their fury on the 
town. 

"They broke into the houses, plundered the 
wine-shops, first of all, and took fifty hostages, 
of whom twenty-six perished. And at half- 
past five, while the fighting was still going on, 
the punitive burning of the town began, by a 
cyclist section, told off for the work, and fur- 
nished with every means for doing it effec- 
tively. These men, according to an eye- 
witness, did their work with wild shouts — 'cris 
saubages.' 

"A hundred and seventeen houses were soon 
burning fiercely. On that hot September eve- 
ning the air was like a furnace. Before long 
the streets were full of blazing d6bris. Two 
persons who had hidden themselves in their 
cellars died of suffocation ; yet to appear in the 
streets was to risk death at the hands of some 
drunk or maddened soldier. 

"At the opening of the French attack a Ger- 
man officer rushed to the Hospital, which was 
full of wounded, in search of franc-tireurs. 
Arrived there, he saw an old man, a chronic 
patient of the hospital, and half idiotic, stand- 
ing, apparently, on the steps of the building. 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 135 

He blew the old man's brains out. He then 
forced his way into the Hospital, pointing his 
revolver at the French wounded, who thought 
their last hour had come. He himself was 
wounded, and at last appeared to yield to the 
remonstrances of the Sister in charge, and 
allowed his wound to be dressed. But in the 
middle of the dressing he broke away, without 
his tunic and helmetless, in a state of mad ex- 
citement, and presently reappeared with a file 
of soldiers. Placing them in the street oppo- 
site the rooms occupied by the French wounded, 
he ordered them to fire a volley. No one was 
hurt, though several beds were struck. Then 
the women's wards were searched. Two sick 
men, eclopes without visible wounds, were 
dragged out of their beds and would have been 
bayonetted then and there but for the en- 
treaties of the nurses who ultimately released 
them. 

"An awful night followed in the still burn- 
ing or smouldering town. Meanwhile, at nine 
o'clock in the evening a party of German offi- 
cers betook themselves to the hamlet of Poteau 
— a village north of Senlis — where Mons. Odent 
had been kept under guard since the afternoon. 
Six other hostages were produced, and they 
were all marched off to a field near Chamant, 



136 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

at the edge of a wood. Here the Maire was 
called up and interrogated. His companions, 
eight or nine metres away, too far to hear what 
was said, watched the scene. As I think of 
it, I seem to see in the southern sky the glare 
of burning Senlis, above it, and spread over the 
fields in which the party stood, a peaceful 
moonlight." In his written account the Cure 
specially mentions the brightness of the har- 
vest moon. 

"Presently the Maire came back to the six, 
and said to one, Benoit Decreys: 'Adieu, my 
poor Benoit, we shall not see each other again 
— they are going to shoot me.' He took his 
crucifix, his purse containing a sum of money, 
and some papers out of his pocket, and asked 
that they should be given to his family. Then, 
pressing the hands held out to him, he said 
good-bye to them all, and went back with a 
firm step to the group of officers. Two sol- 
diers were called up, and the Maire was placed 
at ten paces distance. The soldiers fired, and 
M. Odent fell without a sound. He was hastily 
buried under barely a foot of earth, and his 
six companions were left on the spot through 
the night, expecting the same fate, till the 
morning, when they were released. Six other 
hostages, 'gathered haphazard in the streets/ 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 137 

were shot the same night in the neighbourhood 
of Chamant." 

Meanwhile the Cure, knowing nothing of 
what was happening to the Maire, had been 
thinking for his parishioners and his church. 
When the bombardment began he gathered 
together about a hundred and twenty of them, 
who had apparently no cellars to take refuge 
in, and after sheltering them in the Presbytere 
for a time, he sent them with one of his vicaires 
out of the town. Then, to continue his narra- 
tive: 

"I went to the southern portal of the Cathe- 
dral and stood there, trembling at every burst 
of shrapnel that struck the belfry and the 
roof, and running out into the open, at each 
pause, to be sure that the church was still 
there. When the firing ceased I went back 
to the Presbytere. 

"Presently, furious sounds of blows from 
the place. I went out. I saw some enemy 
cyclists, armed with fragments of stone, break- 
ing in one of the Cathedral doors; another, 
with a hatchet, attacking the belfry door. At 
the sight of me they rushed at me with their 
revolvers, demanding that I should take them 
to the top of the belfry. 'You have a ma- 
chine-gun there V 'Nothing of the sort, Mon- 



138 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

sieur. See for yourselves.' I unlocked the 
door, and just as I put my foot on the first 
step the fusillade in the town began. The 
soldiers started. * You are our prisoner V cried 
the chief, turning to me, as though to seize me. 
"'I know it. You have me in your hands.' 
I went up before them as quickly as my age 
allowed. They searched everywhere, and of 
course found nothing. They ran down and 
disappeared." 

But that was not the end of the Abb6's 
trouble. He was presently sent for to the 
German Headquarters, at the H6tel du Grand 
Cerf, where the table spread for thirty peo- 
ple, by the order of M. Odent, was still wait- 
ing for its guests. The conversation here 
between the Cure and the officer of high rank, 
who spoke to him, is worth repeating. From 
the tenor of it, the presumption is that the 
officer was a Catholic; — probably a Bavarian. 

"I asked leave to go back to the Presbytere. 

"'Better stay here, Monsieur le Cure. You 
will be safer. The burning is going on. To- 
morrow, your town will be only a heap of 
ruins.' 

"'What is our crime?' 'Listen to that 
fusillade. Your inhabitants are attacking us, 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 139 

as they did at Louvain ! Louvain has ceased 
to exist. We will make of Senlis another 
Louvain, so that Paris and France may know 
how we treat those who may imitate you. We 
have found small shot (chevrotines) in the 
body of one of our officers.' 

"' Already?' I thought. How had there 
been any time for the post mortem? But I 
was too crushed to speak. 

"'And also from your belfry we have been 
fired on ! ' 

"At that I recovered myself. 

"'Sir — what may have passed in the streets, 
I cannot say. But, as to the Cathedral, I 
formally deny your charge. Since war broke 
out, I have always had the keys of the belfry. 
I did not even give them to your soldiers, who 
made me take them there. Do you wish me 
to swear it ? ' 

"The officer looked at me. 

"'No need. You are a Catholic priest. I 
see you are sincere.' 

"I bowed." 

A scene that throws much light! A false 
charge — an excited reference to Louvain — a 
monstrous threat — the temper, that is, of panic, 
which is the mother of cruelty. At that very 
moment, the German troops in the Rue de la 



140 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

Republique were driving parties of French 
civilians in front of them, as a protection from 
the Senegalese troops, who were still firing 
from houses near the Paris exit from the town. 
Four or five of these poor people were killed by 
French bullets — a child of five forced along, 
with her mother, was shot in the thigh. Alto- 
gether some twenty to thirty civilians seem to 
have been killed. 

Next day more houses were burned. Then, 
for a time, the quiet of desolation. All the 
normal population were gone, or in the cellars. 
But twenty miles away to the southeast great 
things were preparing. The German occupa- 
tion of Senlis began as we have seen, on a 
Wednesday, the 2nd of September. On Satur- 
day, the 5th, as we all know, the first shots 
were fired in that battle of the Ourcq which 
was the western section of the battle of the 
Marne. By that Saturday, already, writes the 
Abbe Dourlent: 

"There was something changed in the atti- 
tude of the enemy. What had become of the 
brutal arrogance, the insolent cruelty of the 
first days? For three days and nights the 
German troops, an army of 300,000 men, de- 
filed through our streets. It was not the road 
to Paris now that they asked for — it was the 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 141 

way to Nanteuil, Ermenonville, the direction 
of the Marne. On the faces of the officers one 
seemed to read disappointment and anxiety. 
Close to us, on the east, the guns were speak- 
ing, every day more fiercely. What was hap- 
pening?" 

All that the Cure knows is that in a house 
belonging to persons of his acquaintance, 
where some officers of the rear-guard left be- 
hind in Senlis are billeted, two of the young 
officers have been in tears — it is supposed be- 
cause of bad news. Another day, an armoured 
car rushes into Senlis from Paris, the men in 
it exchange some shots with the German sol- 
diers in the principal place, and make off again, 
calling out: "Courage! Deliverance is com- 
ing!" 

Then, on the 9th, just a week from the Ger- 
man entry, there is another fusillade in the 
streets. "It is the Zouaves, knocking at the 
door, dragging out the conquerors of yesterday, 
now a humbled remnant with their hands in 
the air." 

And the Cure goes on to compare Senlis to 
the sand which the Creator showed to the sea. 
"Thus far shalt thou go, and no further." 
"The grain of sand is Senlis, still red with the 
flames which have devoured her, and with the 



142 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

blood of her victims. To these barbarians she 
cries: "You want Paris — you want France? 
Halt ! No road through here !'" 

This combination of the Cure's written and 
spoken account is as close to the truth as I can 
make it. His narrative, as he gave it to me, 
of what he had seen and felt, was essentially 
simple, and, to judge from the French official 
reports, with which I have compared it, essen- 
tially true. There are some discrepancies in 
detail, but nothing that matters. The murder 
of M. Odent, of the other hostages, of the 
civilians placed in front of the German troops, 
and of four or five other victims — the burning 
out by torch and explosive of half a flourishing 
town, because of a discreditable mistake, the 
fruit of panic and passion — these crimes are 
indelibly marked on the record of Germany. 
She has done worse elsewhere. All the same, 
this too she will never efface. Let us imagine 
such things happening at Guildford, or Hat- 
field, or St. Albans ! 

We parted with M. le Cure just in time to 
meet a pleasant party of War Correspondents 
at the very inn, the H6tel du Gerf, which had 
been the German Headquarters during the oc- 
cupation. The Correspondents were on their 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 143 

way between the French Headquarters and 
the nearest point of the line, Soissons or Com- 
piegne, from whose neighbourhood every day 
the Germans were slowly falling back, and 
where on the French side of the great attacks 
of the month of April were preparing. Then, 
after luncheon, we sallied out into the darken- 
ing afternoon, through the Forest of Ermenon- 
ville, and up on to the great plateau stretching 
north towards Soissons, southwards towards 
Meaux, and eastwards to the Ourcq, where 
Maunoury's 6th Army, striking from Paris and 
the west, and the English Army striking from 
the south — aided by all the gallant French line 
from Chateau Thierry to the Grand Couronne, 
dealt that staggering blow against the German 
right, which flung back the German host, and, 
weary as the way has been since, weary as it 
may still be, in truth, decided the war. 

But the clouds hang lower as we emerge 
on the high bare plain. A few flakes — then, 
in a twinkling, a whirling snow-storm through 
which we can hardly see our way. But we 
fight through it, and along the roads, every 
one of which is famous in the history of the 
battle. At our northernmost point we are 
about thirty miles from Soissons and the line. 
Columns of French infantry on the march, 



144 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

guns, ammunition, stores, field-kitchens pass 
us perpetually; the motor moves at a foot's 
pace, and we catch the young faces of the sol- 
diers through the white thickened air. And 
our most animated and animating companion, 
Monsieur P., with his wonderful knowledge of 
the battle, hails every landmark, identifies 
every farm and wood, even in what has be- 
come, in less than an hour, a white wilderness. 
But it is of one village only, of these many 
whose names are henceforth known to his- 
tory, that I wish to speak — the village of 
Vareddes. In my next letter I propose to tell 
the ghastly story of the Hostages of Vareddes. 



VIII 

May 17th, 1917. 

Dear Colonel Roosevelt, 

Shall I ever forget that broad wintry pla- 
teau of the Ourcq, as it lay, at the opening of 
March, under its bed of snow, with its ruined 
villages, its graves scattered over the fields, 
its utter loneliness, save for the columns of 
marching soldiers in the roads, and the howl- 
ing wind that rushed over the fields, the graves, 
the cemeteries, and whistled through the gap- 
ing walls of the poor churches and farms? 
This high spreading plain, which before the 
war was one scene of rural plenty and indus- 
trious peace, with its farm lands and orchards 
dropping gently from the forest country of 
Chantilly, Compiegne, and Ermenonville, down 
to the Ourcq and the Marne, will be a place 
of pilgrimage for generations to come. Most 
of the battle of the Marne was fought on so 
vast a scale, over so wide a stretch of country 
— about 200 miles long, by 50 broad — that 
for the civilian spectator of the future, it will 
never be possible to realise it as a whole, and 
very difficult even to realise any section of it, 

145 



146 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

topographically, owing to the complication of 
the actions involved. But in the battle of 
the Ourcq, the distances are comparatively 
small, the actions comparatively simple and 
intelligible, while all the circumstances of the 
particular struggle are so dramatic and the 
stakes at issue so vast, that every incident is, 
as it were writ, large, and the memory absorbs 
them more easily. 

An Englishwoman, too, may be glad it was 
in this conspicuous section of the battle-field, 
which will perhaps affect the imagination of 
posterity more easily than any other, that it 
fell to the British Army to play its part. To 
General Joffre the glory of the main strategic 
conception of the great retreat; to General 
Gallieni, the undying honour of the rapid 
perception, the quick decision, which flung 
General Maunoury, with the Sixth Army, on 
Von Kluck's flank and rear, at the first hint 
of the German General's swerve to the south- 
east; to General Maunoury himself, and his 
splendid troops, the credit of the battle proper, 
across the broad harvest fields of the Ourcq 
plateau. But the advance of the British 
troops from the south of the Marne, on the 
heels of Von Kluck, was in truth all important 
to the success of Maunoury on the Ourcq. 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 147 

It was the British Expeditionary Force which 
made the hinge of the battle-line, and if 
that hinge had not been strong and supple 
— in all respects equal to its work — the sudden 
attack of the Sixth Army, on the extreme left 
of the battle-line, and the victory of General 
Foch in the centre, might not have availed. 
In other words, had Von Kluck found the weak 
spot he believed in and struck for, all would 
have been different. But the weak spot existed 
only in the German imagination. The British 
troops whom Von Kluck supposed to be ex- 
hausted, and demoralised, were in truth 
nothing of the sort. Rested and reinforced, 
they turned rejoicing upon the enemy, and, 
in concert with the French Sixth Army, de- 
cided the German withdrawal. Every one of 
the six Armies aligned across France, from 
Paris to the Grand Couronne, had its own 
glorious task in the defeat of the German 
plans. But we were then so small a propor- 
tion of the whole, with our 120,000 men, and 
we have become since so accustomed to count 
in millions, that perhaps our part in the 
"miracle of the Marne" is sometimes in danger 
of becoming a little blurred in the popular 
English — and American — conception of the 
battle. Is not the truth rather that we had 



148 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

a twofold share in it? It was Von Kluck's 
miscalculation as to the English strength that 
tempted him to his eastward march; it was 
the quality of the British force and leadership, 
when Sir John French's opportunity came, 
that made the mistake a fatal one. 

How different the aspect of the Ourcq pla- 
teau at the opening of the battle in 1914, 
from the snowy desolation under which we 
saw it ! Perfect summer weather — the har- 
vest stacks in the fields — a blazing sun by 
day, and a clear moon by night: — for the first 
encounters of the five days fighting, till the 
rain came down, Nature could not have set 
a fairer scene. And on the two anniversaries 
which have since passed, summer has again 
decked the battle-field. Thousands have gone 
out to it from Paris, from Meaux, and the 
whole countryside. The innumerable graves, 
single or grouped, among the harvest fields 
and the pastures, have been covered with 
flowers, and bright, mile after mile, with the 
twinkling tricolour, as far as the eye could 
see. At Barcy and Etrepilly, the centres of 
the fight, priests have blessed the graves and 
prayed for the dead. 

There has been neither labour nor money 
indeed as yet wherewith to rebuild the ruined 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 149 

villages and farms, beyond the most neces- 
sary repairs. They stand for the most part 
'as the battle left them. And the fields are 
still alive with innumerable red flags — distinct 
from the tricolour of the graves — which mark 
where the plough must avoid an unexploded 
shell. In a journal of September, 1914, a 
citizen of Senlis describes passing in a motor 
through the scene of the fight, immediately 
after the departure of the Germans, when the 
scavenging and burying-parties were still busy. 

How can I describe it? Where to begin? Abandoned 
farms, on hills of death. The grain-giving earth empty of 
human beings. No labourers — no household smoke. The 
fire of the burning villages has smouldered out, and round 
the houses, and in the courtyards, lie the debris of their 
normal life, trampled, dirty and piecemeal, underfoot. Poor 
farms of the Ile-de-France — dwellings of old times into whose 
barns the rich harvests of the fields had been joyously gathered 
year by year — old tiled roofs, clothed with ancestral moss — 
plain hospitable rooms, where masters and servants met fa- 
miliarly together: — you are no more than calcined and black- 
ened stones! Not a living animal in the ruined stalls, not 
an ox, not a horse, not a sheep. One flies from the houses 
only to find a scene more horrible in the fields. Corpses every- 
where, of men and horses. And everywhere in the fields un- 
exploded shells, which it would be death to touch, which have 
already made many unsuspecting victims. 

Sometimes, as the motor draws near, a man or a woman 
emerges from a building, having still on their faces the terror 
of the hours they have lived through. They scarcely look at 



150 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

us. They are absorbed in their losses, in the struggle to rescue 
something from the wreck. As soon as they are sure it is not 
the Germans come back, they turn away, with slow steps, 
bewildered by what they have suffered. 

The small party in the motor includes a 
priest, and as it passes near Betz, at the north- 
ern end of the battle-field, they see a burying- 
party of French territorials at work. The 
officer in charge beckons to the priest, and 
the priest goes to speak to him. 

"Monsieur L'Abbe, we have just buried here twenty-two 
French soldiers." He points to a trench freshly dug, into which 
the earth has just been shovelled. 

" They are Breton soldiers " — the officer explains — " and the 
men of my burying company are Bretons too. They have 
just discovered that these dead men we have gathered from 
the fields were soldiers from a regiment recruited in their own 
district. And seven of them have recognised among these 
twenty-two dead, one a son, one a son-in-law, one a brother. 
Will you come, Monsieur PAbbe, and say a few words to these 
poor fellows ? " 

So the Abbe goes to the new-made grave, 
reads the De Prqfundis, says a prayer, gives 
the benediction, and then speaks. Tears are 
on the strong, rugged faces of the bareheaded 
Bretons, as they gather round him. A group, 
some little distance off, which is writing the 
names of the dead on a white cross, pauses, 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 151 

catches what is going on, and kneels too, with 
bent heads. . . . 

It is good to linger on that little scene of 
human sympathy and religious faith. It does 
something to protect the mind from the horrors 
of much that has happened here. 

In spite of the storm our indefatigable 
guide carried us through all the principal 
points of the battle-line — St. Soupplets — Mar- 
cilly — Barcy — Etrepilly — Acy-en-Multien ; vil- 
lages from which one by one, by keen, hard 
fighting, the French attack, coming eastwards 
from Dammartin to Paris, dislodged the troops 
of Von Kluck; while to our right lay Trecy 
and Vareddes, a village on the Ourcq, between 
which points ran the strongest artillery posi- 
tions of the enemy. At Barcy, we stopped a 
few minutes to go and look at the ruined 
church, with its fallen bell, and its graveyard 
packed with wreaths and crosses bound with 
the tricolour. At Etrepilly, with the snow 
beating in our faces and the wind howling 
round us, we read the inscription on the na- 
tional monument raised to those fallen in the 
battle, and looking eastwards to the spot 
where Trocy lay under thick curtains of storm, 
we tried to imagine the magnificent charge of 



152 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

the Zouaves, of the 62nd Reserve Division, 
under Commandant Henri D'Urbal, who, with 
many a comrade, lies buried in the cemetery 
of Barcy. 

Five days the battle swayed backwards 
and forwards across this scene, especially fol- 
lowing the lines of the little streams flowing 
eastwards to the Ourcq, the Therouanne, the 
Gergogne, the Grivette. "From village to 
village," says Colonel Buchan, "amid the 
smoke of burning haystacks and farmsteads, 
the French bayonet attack was pressed home." 

" Terrible days of life and death fighting ! " — writes a Meaux 
resident, Madame Roussel-Lepine, " Battles of Chambry, 
Barcy, Puisieux, Acy-en-Multien, the 6th, 7th and 8th of 
September — fierce days to which the graves among the crops 
bear witness. Four hundred volunteers sent to attack a farm, 
from which only seven come back! Ambuscades, barricades 
in the streets, loopholes cut in the cemetery walls, trenches 
hastily dug and filled with dead, night fighting, often hand to 
hand, surprises, the sudden flash of bayonets, a rain of iron, 
a rain of fire, mills and houses burning like torches, — fields 
red with the dead and with the flaming corn — fruit of the 
fields, and flower of the race ! — the sacrifice consummated, the 
cup drunk to the lees ! " 

Moving and eloquent words! They gain 
for me a double significance as I look back 
from them to the little scene we saw at Barcy 
under the snow, — a halt of some French in- 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 153 

fantry in front of the ruined church. The 
"salut au drapeau" was going on, that simple, 
daily rite which, like a secular mass, is the 
outward and visible sign to the French soldier 
of his country and what he owes her. This 
passion of French patriotism — what a marvel- 
lous force, what a regenerating force it has 
shown itself in this war ! It springs, too, from 
the heart of a race which has the Latin gift 
of expression. Listen to this last entry in 
the journal of Captain Robert Dubarle, the 
evening before his death in action: 

This attack to-morrow, besides the inevitable emotion it 
rouses in one's thoughts, stirs in me a kind of joyous impatience, 
and the pride of doing my duty — which is to fight gladly, 
and die victorious. To the last breath of our lives, to the last 
child of our mothers, to the last stone of our dwellings, all is 
thine, my country ! Make no hurry. Choose thine own time 
for striking. If thou needest months, we will fight for months; 
if thou needest years we will fight for years — the children of 
to-day shall be the soldiers of to-morrow. 

Already, perhaps, my last hour is hastening towards me. 
Accept the gift I make thee of my strength, my hopes, my 
joys and my sorrows, of all my being, filled with the passion 
of thee. Pardon thy children their errors of past days. Cover 
them with thy glory — put them to sleep in thy flag. Rise, 
victorious and renewed, upon their graves. Let our holocaust 
save thee — Patrie, Patriel 

An utterance which might well find its 
place in history ! 



154 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

On they go, into the snow and the mist, 
the small sturdy soldiers, bound northwards, 
for those great and victorious attacks on the 
Craonne plateau, and the Chemin des Dames, 
which were to follow so close on our own Brit- 
ish victory on the Vimy ridge. They pass the 
two ladies in the motor-car, looking at us 
with friendly, laughing eyes, and disappear 
into the storm. 

Then we move on to the northern edge of 
the battle-field, and at Rosoy we turn south 
towards Meaux, passing Vareddes to our left. 
The weather clears a little, and from the high 
ground we are able to see Meaux to the west, 
lying beside its great river, than which our 
children's children will greet no more famous 
name. The Marne winds, steely grey, through 
the white landscape, and we run down to it 
quickly. Soon we are making our way on 
foot through the dripping streets of Meaux 
to the old bridge, which the British broke 
down — one of three — on their retreat — so soon 
to end! Then, a few minutes in the lovely 
Cathedral — its beauty was a great surprise 
to me! — a greeting to the tomb of Bossuet — 
ah! what a Discours he would have written 
on the battle of the Marne ! — and a rapid jour- 
ney of some twenty-five miles, back to Paris. 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 155 

But there is still a story left to tell — the 
story of Vareddes. 

"Vareddes" — says a local historian of the 
battle — "is now a very quiet place. There is 
no movement in the streets and little life in 
the houses, where some of the injuries of war 
have been repaired." But there is no spot 
in the wide battle-field where there burns a 
more passionate hatred of a barbarous enemy. 
"Push open this window, enter this house, 
talk with any person whatever whom you 
may happen to meet, and they will tell you 
of the torture of old men, carried off as hos- 
tages and murdered in cold blood, or of the 
agonies of fear deliberately inflicted on old 
and frail women, through a whole night. 

The story of Vareddes is indeed nearly 
incredible. That English, or French, or Italian 
troops could have been guilty of this partic- 
ular crime is beyond imagination. Individual 
deeds of passion and lust are possible, indeed, 
in all armies, though the degree to which they 
have prevailed in the German Army is, by 
the judgment of the civilised world outside 
Germany, unprecedented in modern history. 
But the instances of long-drawn out, cold- 
blooded, unrelenting cruelty, of which the 
German conduct of the war is full, fill one 



156 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

after a while with a shuddering sense of some- 
thing wholly vile and wholly unsuspected, 
which Europe has been sheltering, unawares, 
in its midst. The horror has now thrown off 
the trappings and disguise of modern civilisa- 
tion, and we see it and recoil. We feel that 
we are terribly right in speaking of the Ger- 
mans as barbarians; that, for all their science 
and their organisation, they have nothing 
really in common with the Grseco-Latin and 
Christian civilisation on which this old Eu- 
rope is based. We have thought of them, in 
former days — how strange to look back upon 
it ! — as brothers and coworkers in the human 
cause. But the men who have made and are 
sustaining this war, together with the men, 
civil and military, who have breathed its 
present spirit into the German Army, are 
really moral outlaws, acknowledging no au- 
thority but their own arrogant and cruel wills, 
impervious to the moral ideals and restraints 
that govern other nations, and betraying again 
and again, under the test of circumstance, the 
traits of the savage and the brute. 

And as one says these things, one could 
almost laugh at them ! so strong is still the 
memory of what one used to feel towards the 
poetic, the thinking, the artistic Germany of 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 157 

the past. But that Germany was a mere 
blind, hiding the real Germany. 

Listen, at least, to what this old village of 
the Ile-de-France knows of Germany. 

With the early days of September, 1914, 
there was a lamentable exodus from all this 
district. Long lines of fugitives making for 
safety and the south, carts filled with house- 
hold stuff and carrying the women and chil- 
dren, herds of cattle and sheep crowded the 
roads. The Germans were coming, and the 
terror of Belgium and the Ardennes had spread 
to these French peasants of the centre. On 
the 1st of September, the postmistress of 
Vareddes received orders to leave the village, 
after destroying the telephone and telegraphic 
connections. The news came late, but panic 
spread like wildfire. All the night, Vareddes 
was packing and going. Of 800 inhabitants 
only 100 remained, 30 of them old men. 

One of the emigrants did not get far from 
home. He was a man of 70, Louis Denet 
by name. He left Vareddes with his wife, in 
a farm-cart, driving a cow with them. They 
went a day's journey, and put up at the farm 
of a friend named Roger for a few days. On 
Sunday the 6th, in the morning, four Germans 
arrived at the farm. They went away and 



158 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

came back again in the afternoon. They 
called all the inmates of the farm out into 
the yard. Denet and Roger appeared. "You 
were three men this morning, now you are 
only two!" said one of the Germans. And 
immediately they took the two old men a 
little distance off and shot them both, within 
half a mile of the farm. The body of Roger 
was found by his wife the day after; that of 
Denet was not discovered for some time. 
Nobody has any idea to this day why these 
men were shot. It is worth while to try and 
realise the scene — the terror-stricken old men 
dragged away by their murderers — the wives 
left behind, no doubt under a guard — the 
sound of the distant shots — the broken hearts 
of the widow and the orphan. 

But that was a mere prelude. 

On Friday the 4th of September, a large 
detachment of Von Kluck's army invaded 
Vareddes, coming from Barcy which lies to 
the west. It was no doubt moving towards 
the Marne on that flank march which was 
Von Kluck's undoing. The troops left the 
village on Saturday the 5th, but only to make 
a hurried return that same evening. Von 
Kluck was already aware of his danger, and 
was rapidly recalling troops to meet the ad- 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 159 

vance of Maunoury. Meanwhile the French 
Sixth Army was pressing on from the west, 
and from the 6th to the 9th there was fierce 
fighting in and round Vareddes. There were 
German batteries behind the Presbytere, and 
the Church had become a Hospital. The old 
Cure, the Abbe Fossin, at the age of 78, spent 
himself in devoted service to the wounded 
Germans who filled it. There were other 
dressing-stations near by. The Mairie, the 
school, were full of wounded, of whom there 
were probably some hundreds in the village. 
Only 135 dead were buried in the neighbour- 
hood; the Germans carried off the others in 
great lorries filled with corpses. 

By Monday the 7th, although they were 
still to hold the village till the 9th, the Ger- 
mans knew they were beaten. The rage of 
the great defeat, of the incredible disappoint- 
ment was on them. Only a week before they 
had passed through the same countryside 
crying "Nach Paris," and polishing up buttons, 
belts, rifles, accoutrements generally, so as to 
enter the French capital in grande tenue. For 
whatever might have been the real plans of 
the German General Staff, the rank and file, 
as they came south from Creil and Nanteuil 
believed themselves only a few hours from the 



160 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

Boulevards, from the city of pleasure and 
spoil. 

What had happened? The common cry 
of men so sharply foiled went up. "Nous 
sommes trahis!" The German troops in 
Vareddes, foreseeing immediate withdrawal, 
and surrounded by their own dead and dying, 
must somehow avenge themselves, on some 
one. "Hostages! The village has played us 
false ! The Cure has been signalling from the 
Church. We are in a nest of spies !" 

So on the evening of the 7th, the old Cure 
who had spent his day in the Church, doing 
what he could for the wounded, and was 
worn out, had just gone to bed when there was 
loud knocking at his door. He was dragged 
out of bed, and told that he was charged with 
making signals to the French Army from his 
Church-tower, and so causing the defeat of 
the Germans. 

He pointed out that he was physically in- 
capable of climbing the tower, that any 
wounded German of whom the Church was 
full could have seen him doing it, had the 
absurd charge been true. He reminded them 
that he had spent his whole time in nursing 
their men. No use ! He is struck, hustled, 
spat upon, and dragged off to the Mairie. 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 161 

There he passed the night sitting on a hamper, 
and in the morning some one remembers to 
have seen him there, saying his rosary. 

In one of the local accounts there is a touch- 
ing photograph taken, of course, before the 
war, of the Cure among the boys of the vil- 
lage. A mild, reserved face, with something 
of the child in it; the face of a man who had 
had a gentle experience of life, and might 
surely hope for a gentle death. 

Altogether some fourteen hostages, all but 
two over sixty years of age, and several over 
seventy, were taken during the evening and 
night. They ask why. The answer is "The 
Germans have been betrayed!" One man is 
arrested because he had said to a German 
who was boasting that the German Army 
would be in Paris in two days— "All right !— 
but you're not there yet!" Another, because 
he had been seen going backwards and for- 
wards to a wood, in which it appeared he had 
hidden two horses which he had been trying 
to feed. One old man of 79 could only walk 
to the yard in which the others were gathered 
by the help of his wife's arm. When they 
arrived there, a soldier separated them so 
roughly that the wife fell. 

Imagine the horror of the September night ! 



162 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

— the terror of the women, who, in the general 
exodus of the young and strong, had stayed 
behind with their husbands. The old men 
could not be persuaded to leave the farms 
and fields in which they had spent their lives. 
"What harm can they do to us — old people?" 
No doubt that had been the instinctive feel- 
ing among those who had remained to face 
the invasion. 

But the Germans were not content without 
wreaking the instinct — which is the savage 
instinct — to break and crush and ill-treat 
something which has thwarted you, on the 
women of Vareddes also. They gathered 
them out of the farmyard, to which they had 
come in the hopes of being allowed to stay 
with the men, and shut them up in a room of 
the farm. And there with fixed bayonets the 
soldiers amused themselves with terrifying 
these trembling creatures during a great part 
of the night. They made them all kneel down, 
facing a file of soldiers, and the women thought 
their last hour had come. One was 77 years 
old, three 67, the two others just under 60. 
The eldest, Madame Barthelemy, said to the 
others — "We are going to die. Make your 
'contrition 9 if you can." (The Town Librarian 
of Meaux, from whose account I take these 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 163 

facts, heard these details from the lips of poor 
Madame Barthelemy herself.) The cruel scene 
shapes itself as we think of it — the half-lit 
room, the row of kneeling and weeping women, 
the grinning soldiers, bayonet in hand, and 
the old men waiting in the yard outside. 

But with the morning, the French mitrail- 
leuses are heard. The soldiers disappear. 
The poor old women are free; they are able 
to leave their prison. 

But their husbands are gone, — carried off 
as hostages by the Germans. There were 
19 hostages in all. Three of them were taken 
off in a northwesterly direction, and found 
some German officers quartered in a chateau, 
who after a short interrogation released them. 
Of the other 16, fifteen are old men, and the 
sixteenth a child. The Cure is with them, and 
finds great difficulty, owing to his age, the 
exhaustion of the night, and lack of food, in 
keeping up with the column. It was now 
Thursday the 10th, the day on which, as is 
generally believed, the Kaiser signed the order 
for the general retreat of the German Armies 
in France. But the hostages are told that 
the French Army has been repulsed, and the 
Germans will be in Paris directly. 

At last, the poor Cure could walk no farther. 



164 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

He gave his watch to a companion. "Give 
it to my family when you can. I am sure 
they mean to shoot me." Then he dropped 
exhausted. The Germans hailed a passing 
vehicle and made him and another old man 
who had fallen out follow in it. Presently, 
they arrive at Lizy sur Ourcq, through which 
thousands of German troops are now passing 
bound not for Paris, but for Soissons and the 
Aisne, and in the blackest of tempers. Here, 
after twenty -four more hours of suffering and 
starvation, the Cure is brought before a court- 
martial of German officers sitting in a barn. 
He is once more charged with signalling from 
the church to the French Army. He again 
denies the charge, and reminds his judges of 
what he had done for the German wounded, 
to whose gratitude he appeals. Then four 
German soldiers give some sort of evidence, 
founded either on malice or mistake. There 
are no witnesses for the defence, no further 
inquiry. The president of the Court Martial 
says, in bad French, to the other hostages 
who stand by: "The Cure has lied — he is a 
spy — il sera jtige." 

What did he mean — and what happened 
afterwards? The French witnesses of the 
scene who survived understood the officer's 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 165 

words to mean that the Cure would be shot. 
With tears, they bade him farewell — as he 
sat crouched in a corner of the barn guarded 
by two German soldiers. He was never seen 
again by French eyes: and the probability 
is that he was shot immediately after the 
scene in the barn. 

Then the miserable march of the other old 
men begins again. They are dragged along 
in the wake of the retreating Germans. The 
day is very hot, the roads are crowded with 
troops and lorries. They are hustled and 
hurried, and their feeble strength is rapidly 
exhausted. The older ones beg that they 
may be left to die, the younger help them as 
much as they can. When any one falls out, 
he is kicked or beaten till he gets up again. 
And all the time the passing troops mock and 
insult them. At last, near Coulombs, after 
a march of two hours and a half, a man of 
73, called Jourdaine, falls. His guards rush 
upon him, with blows and kicks. In vain. 
He has no strength to move, and his mur- 
derers finish him with a ball in the head and 
one in the side, and bury him hastily in a 
field a few metres off. 

The weary march goes on all day. When 
it ends, another old man — 79 years old — "le 



166 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

pere Milliardet" — can do no more. The next 
morning he staggered to his feet at the order 
to move but fell almost immediately. Then a 
soldier with the utmost coolness sends his 
bayonet through the heart of the helpless 
creature. Another falls on the road a little 
farther north — then another — and another. 
All are killed, as they lie. 

The poor Maire, Lievin, struggles on as 
long as he can — two other prisoners support 
him on either side. But he has a weak heart — 
his face is purple — he can hardly breathe. 
Again and again he falls, only to be brutally 
pulled up, the Germans shouting with laughter 
at the old man's misery. (This comes from 
the testimony of the survivors.) Then he 
too falls for the last time. Two soldiers take 
him into the cemetery of Chouy. Lievin 
understands, and patiently takes out his hand- 
kerchief and bandages his own eyes. It takes 
three balls to kill him. 

Another hostage, a little farther on, who 
had also fallen, was beaten to death before 
the eyes of the others. 

The following day, after having suffered 
every kind of insult and privation, the wretched 
remnant of the civilian prisoners reached 
Soissons, and were despatched to Germany, 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 167 

bound for the Concentration Camp at Er- 
furt. 

Eight of them, poor souls! — reached Ger- 
many, where two of them died. At last, in 
January, 1915, four of them were returned to 
France through Switzerland. They reached 
Schaffhausen with a number of other rapatries, 
in early February, to find there the boundless 
pity with which the Swiss know so well how 
to surround the frail and tortured sufferers 
of this war. In a few weeks more, they were 
again at home, among the old farms and 
woods of the Ue-de-France. "They are now 
in peace," says the Meaux Librarian — "among 
those who love them, and whose affection 
tries, day by day, to soften for them the cruel 
memory of their Calvary and their exile." 

A monument to the memory of the mur- 
dered hostages is to be erected in the village 
market-place, and a plaque has been let into 
the wall of the farm where the old men and 
the women passed their first night of agony. 

What is the moral of this story? I have 
chosen it to illustrate again the historic words 
which should be, I think — and we know that 
what is in our hearts is in your hearts also ! — 
the special watchword of the Allies and of 



168 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

America in these present days, when the Ger- 
man strength may collapse at any moment, 
and the problems of peace negotiations may 
be upon us before we know. 

Reparation — Restitution — Guarantees I 
The story of Vareddes, like that of Senlis, 
is not among the vilest — by a long, long way 
— of those which have steeped the name of 
Germany in eternal infamy during this war. 
The tale of Gerbeviller — which I shall take 
for my third instance — as I heard it from the 
lips of eye-witnesses, plunges us in deeper 
depths of horror; and the pages of the Bryce 
report are full of incidents beside which that 
of Vareddes looks almost colourless. 

All the same, let us insist again that no 
Army of any great or small Power in Europe, 
outside the Central Powers and Turkey, or 
of America, or of any British Dominion would 
have been capable of the treatment given 
by the soldiers of Germany to the hostages 
of Vareddes. It brings out into sharp relief 
that quality, or mentality, to use the fashion- 
able word, which Germany shares with Aus- 
tria — witness the Austrian doings in Serbia — 
and with Turkey — witness Turkey's doings 
in Armenia — but not with any other civilised 
nation. It is the quality of, or the tendency 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 169 

to, deliberate and pitiless cruelty; a quality 
which makes of the man or nation, who shows 
it, a particularly terrible kind of animal; and 
the more terrible, the more educated. Unless 
we can put it down and stamp it out, as it 
has become embodied in a European nation, 
European freedom and peace, American free- 
dom and peace, have no future. 

But now, let me carry you to Lorraine ! 
to the scenes of that short but glorious cam- 
paign of September, 1914, by which, while 
the battle of the Marne was being fought, 
General Castelnau was protecting the right 
of the French Armies; and to the devastated 
villages, where American kindness is already 
at work, rebuilding the destroyed and com- 
forting the broken-hearted. 



IX 

May 24th, 1917. 

Dear Colonel Roosevelt, 

To any citizen of a country allied with 
France in the present struggle, above all to 
any English man or woman who is provided 
with at least some general knowledge of the 
battle of the Marne, the journey across France 
from Paris to Nancy can never fail to be one 
of poignant interest. Up to a point beyond 
Chalons, the "Ligne de l'Est," follows in gen- 
eral the course of the great river, and therefore 
the line of the battle. You pass La Ferte- 
sous-Jouarre, where the Third Corps of Gen- 
eral French's Army crossed the river; Charly- 
sur- Marne, where a portion of the First 
Corps found an unexpectedly easy crossing, 
owing, it is said, to the hopeless drunkenness 
of the enemy rear-guard charged with defend- 
ing the bridge; and Chateau Thierry, famous 
in the older history of France, where the right 
of the First Corps crossed after sharp fighting, 
and, in the course of "a gigantic man-hunt" in 
and around the town took a large number of 
German prisoners, before by nightfall coming 

170 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 171 

into touch with the left of the French Fifth 
Army under Franchet d 'Esperey. At Dornans 
you are only a few miles north of the Marshes 
of St. Gond, where General Foch, after some 
perilous moments, won his brilliant victory 
over General Bulow and the German Second 
Army, including a corps of the Prussian Guards ; 
while at Chalons I look up from a record I am 
reading of the experiences of the Diocese dur- 
ing the war, written by the Bishop, to watch 
for the distant Cathedral, and recall the scene 
of the night of September 9th, when the Ger- 
man Headquarters staff in that town, "flown 
with insolence and wine," after what is de- 
scribed as "an excellent dinner and much riot- 
ous drinking," were roused about midnight by 
a sudden noise in the hotel and shouts of, 
'the French are here!" "In fifteen minutes," 
writes an officer of the staff of General Langle 
de Cary, "the hotel was empty." 

At Epernay and Chalons those French offi- 
cers who are bound for the fighting-line in 
Champagne, east and west of Reims, left the 
train, and somewhere below Epernay I fol- 
lowed in thought the flight of an aeroplane, 
which seemed to be heading northwards across 
the ridges which bound the river valley — north- 
wards for Reims, and that tragic ghost which 



172 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

the crime of Germany has set moving through 
history for ever, never to be laid or silenced — 
Joan of Arc's Cathedral. Then, at last, we 
are done with the Marne. We pass Bar-le- 
Duc, on one of her tributaries, the Ornain; 
after which the splendid Meuse flashes into 
sight, running north on its victorious way to 
Verdun; then the Moselle, with Toul and its 
beautiful church on the right; and finally the 
Meurthe, on which stands Nancy. A glorious 
sisterhood of rivers ! The more one realises 
what they have meant to the history of France, 
the more one understands that strong instinct 
of the early Greeks, which gave every river its 
god, and made of the Simois and the Xanthus 
personages almost as real as Achilles himself. 
But alas ! the whole great spectacle, here as 
on the Ourcq, was sorely muffled and blurred 
by the snow, which lay thick over the whole 
length and breadth of France, effacing the 
landscape in one monotonous whiteness. If I 
remember right, however, it had ceased to fall, 
and twenty-four hours after we reached Nancy 
it had disappeared. It lasted just long enough 
to let us see the fairy-like Place Stanislas raise 
its beautiful gilded gates and white palaces be- 
tween the snow and the moonlight — a sight not 
soon forgotten. 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 173 

We were welcomed at Nancy by the Prefet 
of the Department, Monsieur Leon Mirman, 
to whom an old friend had written from Paris, 
and by the courteous French officer, Capitaine 
de B., who was to take us in charge, for the 
French Army, during our stay. M. Mirman 
and his active and public-spirited wife have 
done a great work at Nancy and in the desolate 
country round it. From the ruined villages of 
the border the poor refugies have been gathered 
into the old capital of Lorraine, and what 
seemed to me a remarkably efficient and in- 
telligent philanthropy has been dealing with 
their needs and those of their children. Nor 
is this all. M. Mirman is an old Radical and, 
of course, a Government official, sent down 
some years ago from Paris. Lorraine is ar- 
dently Catholic, as we all know, and her old 
Catholic families are not the natural friends of 
the Republican regime. But President Poin- 
care's happy phrase, Vunion sacree, describing 
the fusion of all parties, classes, and creeds in 
the war service of France, has nowhere found a 
stronger echo than in Lorraine. The Prefet is 
on the friendliest of terms with the Catholic 
population, rich and poor; and they, on their 
side, think and speak warmly of a man who is 
clearly doing his patriotic best for all alike. 



174 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

Our first day's journeyings were to show us 
something of the qualities of this Catholic 
world of Lorraine. A charming and distin- 
guished Frenchwoman who accompanied us 
counted, no doubt, for much in the warmth of 
the kindness shown us. And yet I like to be- 
lieve — indeed, I am sure — that there was more 
than this in it. There was the thrilling sense 
of a friendship between our two nations, a 
friendship new and far-reaching, cemented by 
the war, but looking beyond it, which seemed 
to me to make the background of it all. Long 
as I have loved and admired the French, I 
have often — like many others of their English 
friends and admirers — felt and fretted against 
the kind of barrier that seemed to exist between 
their intimate life and ours. It was as though, 
at bottom and in the end, something cold and 
critical in the French temperament, combined 
with ignorance and prejudice on our own part, 
prevented a real contact between the two na- 
tionalities. In Lorraine, at any rate, and for 
the first time, I felt this "something" gone. 
Let us only carry forward intelligently, after the 
war, the process of friendship born from the 
stress and anguish of this time — for there is 
an art and skill in friendship just as there is an 
art and skill in love — and new horizons will 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 175 

open for both nations. The mutual respect, 
the daily intercourse, and the common glory 
of our two armies fighting amid the fields and 
woods of France — soon to welcome a third 
army, your own, to their great fellowship ! — 
are the foundations to-day of all the rest; and 
next come the efforts that have been made by 
British and Americans to help the French in 
remaking and rebuilding their desolated land, 
efforts that bless him that gives and him that 
takes, but especially him that gives; of which 
I shall have more to say in the course of this 
letter. But a common victory and a common 
ardour in rebuilding the waste places, and 
binding up the broken-hearted — even they will 
not be enough unless, beyond the war, all three 
nations — nay, all the Allies, do not set them- 
selves to a systematic interpenetration of life 
and thought, morally, socially, commercially. 
As far as France and England are concerned, 
English people must go more to France; French 
people must come more to England. Rela- 
tions of hospitality, of correspondence, of wide 
mutual acquaintance, must not be left to mere 
chance; they must be furthered by the mind of 
both nations. Our English children must go 
for part of their education to France; and 
French children must be systematically wooed 



176 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

over here. Above all, the difficulty of language 
must be tackled as it has never been yet, so 
that it may be a real disadvantage and disgrace 
for boy or girl of either country who has had 
a secondary education not to be able to speak, 
in some fashion, the language of the other. 
As for the working classes and the country 
populations of both countries, what they have 
seen of each other, as brothers in arms during 
the war, may well prove of more lasting im- 
portance than anything else. 

But I am wandering a little from Nancy 
and the story of our long Sunday ! 

The snow had disappeared and there were 
voices of spring in the wind. A French Army 
motor arrived early, with another French offi- 
cer, the Capitaine de G , who proved to be 

a most interesting and stimulating guide. With 
him I drove slowly through the beautiful town, 
looking at the ruined houses, which are fairly 
frequent in its streets, for Nancy has had its 
bombardments, and there is one gun of long 
range in particular surnamed by the town "la 
grosse Bertha," which has done and still does, 
at intervals, damage of the kind the German 
loves. Bombs, too, have been dropped by 
aeroplanes both here and at Luneville, in 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 177 

streets crowded with non-combatants, with the 
natural result. It has been in reprisal for this 
and similar deeds elsewhere, and in the hope of 
stopping them, that the French have raided 
German towns across the frontier. But the 
spirit of Nancy remains quite undaunted. The 
children of its schools, drilled to run down to 
the cellars at the first alarm, as our children 
are drilled to empty a school on a warning of 
a Zeppelin raid, are the gayest and most spir- 
ited creatures, as I saw them at their games 
and action songs; unless, indeed, it be the 
children of the refugies, in whose faces some- 
times one seems to see the reflection of scenes 
that no child ought to have witnessed and not 
even a child can forget. For these children 
come from the frontier villages, ravaged by the 
German advance, and still, some of them, in 
German occupation. And the orgy of mur- 
der, cruelty, and arson which broke out at 
Nomeny, Badonviller, and Gerbeviller, during 
the campaign of 1914, has scarcely been 
surpassed elsewhere — even in Belgium. Here 
again, as at Vareddes, the hideous deeds done 
were largely owing to the rage of defeat. The 
Germans, mainly Bavarians, on the frontier, 
had set their hearts on Nancy, as the troops 
of Von Kluck has set their hearts on Paris; 



178 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

and General Castelnau, commanding the Sec- 
ond Army, denied them Nancy; as Maunoury's 
Sixth Army denied Von Kluck. 

But more of this presently. We started first 
of all for a famous point in the fighting of 
1914, the farm and hill of Leomont. By this 
time the day had brightened into a cold sun- 
light and as we sped south from Nancy on the 
Luneville road, through the old town of St. 
Nicholas du Port, with its remarkable church, 
and past the great Salt Works at Dombasie, 
all the countryside was clear to view. Good 
fortune indeed! — as I soon discovered when, 
after climbing a steep hill to the east of the 
road, we found ourselves looking over the fight- 
ing-lines and a wide section of the frontier, with 
the Forest of Parroy, which is still German, 
stretching its dark length southwards on the 
right, while to the north ran the famous heights 
of the Grand Couronne — name of good omen ! 
— which suggests so happily the historical im- 
portance of the ridge, which protects Nancy 
and covers the French right. Then, if one 
turned westward, one looked over the valley 
of the Meurthe, with its various tributaries, 
the Mortagne, in particular, on which stands 
Gerbeviller, and away to the Moselle and the 
Meuse. But the panoramic view was really 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 179 

made to live and speak for me by the able man 
at my side. With French precision and French 
logic, he began with the geography of the coun- 
try, its rivers and hills and plateaux, and its 
natural capacities for defence against the Ger- 
man enemy; handling the view as though it 
had been a great map, and pointing out as he 
went the disposition of the French frontier 
armies, and the use made of this feature and 
that by the French generals in command. 

This Lorraine campaign at the opening of 
the war is very little realised outside France. 
It lasted some three weeks. It was preceded 
by the calamitous French defeat at Morhange, 
where on August 20th portions of the 15 th and 
16th Corps of the Second Army — young troops 
drawn from southwestern France, who in sub- 
sequent actions fought with great bravery — 
broke in rout before a tremendous German at- 
tack. The defeat almost gave the Germans 
Nancy. But General Castelnau's nerve and 
high ability retrieved the disaster. He fell 
back on Nancy while the Germans advancing 
farther south occupied Luneville (August 22d) 
and burnt Gerbeviller. On the 23d, 24th, and 
25th there was fierce fighting on and near this 

hill on which we stood. Capitaine de G , 

with the 2d battalion of Chasseurs, under Gen- 



180 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

eral Dubail, had been in the thick of the strug- 
gle, and he described to me the action on the 
slopes beneath us, and how, through his glasses, 
he had watched the enemy on the neighbouring 
hill forcing parties of French civilians to bury 
their dead and dig trenches, under the fire of 
their own people. 

The hill of Leomont, and the many graves 
upon it, were quiet enough as we stood talking 
there. The old farm was in ruins, and in the 
fields stretching up the hill there were the re- 
mains of trenches. All around and below us 
spread the beautiful Lorraine country, with its 
rivers and forests; and to the southeast one 
could just see the blue mass of Mont Donon 
and the first spurs of the Vosges. 

"Can you show me exactly where the French 
line runs?" I asked my companion. He 
pointed to a patch of wood some six miles 
away. "There is a French battalion there. 
And you see that other patch of wood a little 
farther east? There is a German battalion 
there. Ah! " 

Suddenly he broke off, and the younger offi- 
cer with us, Capitaine de B , came running 

up, pointing overhead. I craned my neck to 
look into the spring blue above us, and there — 
7,000 to 8,000 feet high, according to the oflS- 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 181 

cers — were three Boche aeroplanes pursued by 
two French machines. In and out a light band 
of white cloud the fighters in the air chased 
each other, shrapnel bursting all round them 
like tufts of white wool. They were so high 
that they looked mere white specks. Yet we 
could follow their action perfectly — how the 
Germans climbed, before running for home, 
and how the French pursued. It was breath- 
less while it lasted ! But we did not see the 
end. The three Taubes were clearly driven 
back, and in a few seconds they and the French- 
men had disappeared in distance and cloud 
towards the fighting-line. The following day 
at a point farther to the north a well-known 
French airman was brought down and killed, 
in just such a fight. 

Beyond Leomont we diverged westward 
from the main road, and found ourselves sud- 
denly in one of those utterly ruined villages 
which now bestrew the soil of northern, cen- 
tral, and eastern France ; of that France which 
has been pre-eminently for centuries, in spite 
of revolutions, the pious and watchful guardian 
of what the labour of the dead generations had 
bequeathed to their sons. Vitrimont, how- 
ever, was destroyed in fair fight during the 
campaign of 1914. Bombardment had made 



182 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

wreck of the solid houses, built of the warm 
red stone of the country. It had destroyed 
the church and torn up the graveyard, and 
when its exiled inhabitants returned to it by 
degrees, even French courage and French thrift 
quailed before the task of reconstruction. But 
presently there arrived a quiet American lady 
who began to make friends with the people of 
Vitrimont, to find out what they wanted, and 
to consult with all those on the spot who could 
help to bring the visions in her mind to pass — 
with the Prefet, with the officials, local and 
governmental, of the neighbouring towns, with 
the Catholic women of the richer Lorraine fam- 
ilies, gentle, charitable, devout, who quickly 
perceived her quality, and set themselves to 
co-operate with her. It was the American 
lady's intention simply to rebuild Vitrimont. 
And she is steadily accomplishing it, with the 
help of generous money subsidies coming, 
month by month, from one rich American 
woman — a woman of San Francisco — across 
the Atlantic. How one envies that American 
woman ! 

The sight of Miss Polk at work lives, indeed, 
a warm memory in one's heart. She has estab- 
lished herself in two tiny rooms in a peasant's 
cottage, which have been made just habitable 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 183 

for her. A few touches of bright colour, a pic- 
ture or two, a book or two, some flowers, with 
furniture of the simplest — amid these surround- 
ings, on the outskirts of the ruined village, with 
one of its capable, kindly faced women to run 
the menage, Miss Polk lives and works, realis- 
ing bit by bit the plans of the new Vitrimont, 
which have been drawn for her by the architect 
of the department, and follow loyally old Lor- 
raine traditions. The church has been already 
restored and re-opened. The first Mass within 
its thronged walls was — so the spectators say 
— a moving sight. "That sad word 'Joy'" — 
Landor's pregnant phrase — comes back to one, 
as expressing the bitter-sweet of all glad things, 
in this countryside, which has seen — so short 
a time ago — death and murder and outrage at 
their worst. The gratitude of the villagers to 
their friend and helper has taken various forms. 
The most public mark of it, so far, has been 
Miss Pojk's formal admission to the burgess 
rights of Vitrimont, which is one of the old 
communes of France. And the village insists 
that she shall claim her rights! When the 
time came for dividing the communal wood in 
the neighbouring forest, her fellow citizens ar- 
rived to take her with them and show her how 
to obtain her share. As to the affection and 



184 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

confidence with which she is regarded, it was 
enough to walk with her through the village, 
to judge of its reality. 

But it makes one happy to think that it is 
not only Americans who have done this sort of 
work in France. Look, for instance, at the 
work of the Society of Friends in the depart- 
ment of the Marne — on that fragment of the 
battlefield which extends from Bar-le-duc to 
Vitry St. Francois. "Go and ask," wrote a 
French writer in 1915, "for the village of 
Huiron, or that of Glannes, or that other, with 
its name to shudder at, splashed with blood 
and powder — Sermaize. Inquire for the Eng- 
lish Quakers. Books, perhaps, have taught 
you to think of them as people with long black 
coats and long faces. Where are they ? Here 
are only a band of workmen, smooth-faced — 
not like our country folk. They laugh and 
sing while they make the shavings fly under 
the plane and the saw. They are building 
wooden houses and roofing them with tiles. 
Around them are poor people whose features 
are stiff and grey, like those of the dead. 
These are the women, the old men, the chil- 
dren, the weaklings of our sweet France, who 
have lived for months in damp caves and dens, 
till they look like Lazarus rising from the tomb. 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 185 

But life is beginning to come back to their eyes 
and their lips. The hands they stretch out to 
you tremble with joy. To-night they will sleep 
in a house, in their house. And inside there 
will be beds and tables and chairs, and things 
to cook with. ... As they go in and look 
they embrace each other, sobbing." 

By June, 1915, 150 "Friends" had rebuilt 
more than 400 houses, and re-housed more 
than 700 persons. They had provided ploughs 
and other agricultural gear, seeds for the har- 
vest fields and for the gardens, poultry for the 
farmyards. And from that day to this the 
adorable work has gone on. "By this shall all 
men know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one 
another /" 

It is difficult to tear oneself away from 
themes like this, when the story one has still 
to tell is the story of Gerbeviller. At Vitri- 
mont the great dream of Christianity — the 
City of God on earth — seems still reasonable. 
At Heremeuil and Gerbeviller we are within 
sight and hearing of deeds that befoul the 
human name, and make one despair of a world 
in which they can happen. 

At luncheon, in a charming house of old Lor- 
raine, with an intellectual and spiritual atmos- 



186 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

phere that reminded me of a book that was 
one of the abiding joys of my younger days — 
the "Recit (Tune Sceur" — we heard from the 
lips of some of those present an account of the 
arrival at Luneville of the fugitives from Ger- 
beviller, after the entry of the Bavarians': into 
the town. Women and children and old men, 
literally mad with terror, had escaped from the 
burning town, and found their way over the 
13 kilometres that separate Gerbeviller from 
Luneville. No intelligible account could be 
got from them; they had seen things that shat- 
ter the nerves and brains of the weak and old; 
they were scarcely human in their extremity 
of fear. And when an hour later we reached 
Gerbeviller, the terror which had inspired that 
frenzied flight became, as we listened to Sceur 
Julie, a tangible presence haunting the ruined 
town. 

Gerbeviller and Sceur Julie are great names 
in France to-day. Gerbeviller, with Nomeny, 
Badonviller, and Sermaize, stands in France for 
what is most famous in German infamy; Soeur 
Julie, the ( *chere soeur" of so many narratives, 
for that form of courage and whole-hearted 
devotion which is specially dear to the French, 
because it has in it a touch of panache, of 
audacity! — it is not too meek, it gets its own 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 187 

back when it can, and likes to punish the sin- 
ner as well as to forgive him. Sister Julie, of 
the order of St. Charles of Nancy, Madame 
Rigard, in civil parlance, had been for years 
when the war broke out the head of a modest 
cottage hospital in the small country town of 
Gerbeviller. The town was prosperous and 
pretty; its gardens ran down to the Mortagne, 
flowing at its feet, and it owned a country 
house in a park, full of treasures new and old 
— tapestries, pictures, books — as Lorraine likes 
to have such things about her. 

But unfortunately it occupied one of the cen- 
tral points of the fighting in the campaign of 
Lorraine, after the retreat of General Castel- 
nau's Army at Morhange on August 20th, 
1914. The exultant and victorious Germans 
pushed on rapidly after that action. Luneville 
was occupied and the fighting spread to the dis- 
tricts south and west of that town. But Gen- 
eral Castelnau, great in temporary misfortune 
as he was to be great, also, a fortnight later, in 
the decisive victory of September 8th on the 
Grand Couronne, was ready for them. The 
campaign lasted only three weeks. By that 
time Nancy was safe, Luneville, and Gerbe- 
viller had been re-taken, and the German line 
had been driven back to where we saw it from 



188 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

the hill of Leomont. But in that three weeks 
a hell of cruelty, in addition to all the normal 
sufferings of war, had been let loose on the vil- 
lages of Lorraine; on Nomeny to the north of 
Nancy, on Badonviller, Baccarat and Gerbe- 
viller to the south. The Bavarian troops, 
whose record is among the worst in the war, 
got terribly out of hand, especially when the 
tide turned against them; and if there is one 
criminal who, if he is still living, will deserve 
and, I hope, get an impartial trial some day 
before an international tribunal, it will be the 
Bavarian general, General Class. 

Here is the first-hand testimony of M. Mir- 
man, the Prefet of the Department. At Ger- 
beviller he writes, the ruin and slaughter of 
the town and its inhabitants had nothing to 
do with legitimate war. 

We are here in presence of an inexpiable crime. The 
crime was signed. Such signatures are soon rubbed out. I 
saw that of the murderer — and I bear my testimony. 

The bandits who were at work here were assassins. I have 
seen the bodies of their victims, and taken the evidence on the 
spot. They shot down the inhabitants like rabbits, killing 
them haphazard in the streets, on their doorsteps, almost at 
arm's length. Of these victims it is still difficult to ascertain 
the exact number; it will be more than 50. Most of the victims 
had been buried when I first entered the town ; here and there, 
however, in a garden, at the entrance to a cellar, the corpses 
of women still awaited burial. In a field just outside the 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 189 

town I saw on the ground, their hands tied, some with their 
eyes bandaged, fifteen old men, murdered. They were in 
three groups of five. The men of each group had evidently 
clung to each other before death. The clenched hand of one 
of them still held an old pipe. They were all old men with 
white hair. Some days had elapsed since their murder, but 
their aspect in death was still venerable; their quiet, closed 
eyes seemed to appeal to heaven. A staff officer of the 2d 
Army who was with me photographed the scene; with other 
"pieces de conviction" the photograph is in the hands of the 
Governmental Commission, charged with investigating the 
crimes of the Germans during this war. 

The Bavarian soldiers in Gerbeviller were 
not only murderers, they were incendiaries, 
even more deliberate and thoroughgoing than 
the soldiers of Von Kluck's army at Senlis. 
With the exception of a few houses beyond the 
hospital, spared at the entreaty of Soeur Julie, 
and on her promise to nurse the German 
wounded, the whole town was deliberately 
burned out, house by house, the bare walls left 
standing, the rest destroyed. And as, after the 
fire, the place was twice taken and re-taken 
under bombardment, its present condition may 
be imagined. It was during the burning that 
some of the worst murders and outrages took 
place. For there is a maddening force in tri- 
umphant cruelty which is deadlier than that 
of wine; under it men become demons, and all 
that is human perishes. 



190 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

The excuse, of course, was here as at Senlis: 
"Les civils ont tire!" There is not the slightest 
evidence in support of the charge. As at Sen- 
lis, there was a French rear-guard — of 57 Chas- 
seurs — left behind to delay the German ad- 
vance as long as possible. They were told to 
hold their ground for five hours, they held it 
for eleven, fighting with reckless bravery, and 
firing from a street below the hospital. The 
Germans, taken by surprise, lost a good many 
men, before, at small loss to themselves, the 
Chasseurs retreated. In their rage at the un- 
expected check, and feeling, no doubt, already 
that the whole campaign was going against 
them, the Germans avenged themselves on the 
town and its helpless inhabitants. 

Our half-hour in Soeur Julie's parlour was 
a wonderful experience! Imagine a portly 
woman of sixty, with a shrewd, humorous 
face, talking with French vivacity, and with 
many homely turns of phrase drawn straight 
from that life of the soil and the peasants amid 
which she works; a woman named in one of 
General Castelnau's Orders of the Day and 
entitled to wear the Legion of Honour; a 
woman, too, who has seen horror face to face 
as few women, even in war, have seen it, yet 
still simple, racy, full of irony and full of heart, 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 191 

talking as a mother might talk of her "grands 
blesses," but always with humorous asides, 
and an utter absence of pose or pretence; 
flashing now into scorn and now into tender- 
ness, as she described the conduct of the Ger- 
man officers who searched her hospital for 
arms, or the helplessness of the wounded men 
whom she protected. I will try and put down 
some of her talk. It threw much light for me 
on the psychology of two nations. 

During the fighting we had always about 300 of our wounded 
(nos chers blesses) in this hospital. As fast as we sent them off 
others came in. All our stores were soon exhausted. The 
floor, the passages ran with blood. We did what we could. I 
was thankful we had some good wine in the cellar — about 200 
bottles. You understand, Madame, that when we go to nurse 
our people in their farms they don't pay us, but they like to 
give us something — very often it is a bottle of old wine, and 
we put it in the cellar, when it comes in handy often for our 
invalids. Ah ! I was glad of it for our blesses ! I said to my 
Sisters: "Give it them! and not by thimblefuls — give them 
enough!" Ah, poor things! It made some of them sleep. 
It was all we had. One day I passed a soldier who was lying 
back in his bed with a sigh of satisfaction. "Ah, ma Sawr, ga 
resusciterait un mort /" (That would bring a dead man to 
life!) So I stopped to ask what they had just given him. 
And it was a large glass of Lachryma Christi ! 

But then came the day when the Commandant, the French 
Commandant, you understand, came to me and said: "Sister, 
I have sad news for you. I am going. I am taking away the 
wounded — and all my stores. Those are my orders." 

"But, mon Commandant, you'll leave me some of your stores 



192 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

for the grands blesses, whom you leave behind — whom you 
can't move ? What ! You must take it all away ? Ah, ga — 
non I I don't want any extras. I won't take your chloroform, 
I won't take your bistouris, I won't take your electire things, 
but — hand over the iodine! (en avant Viode /), hand over the 
cotton-wool, and the gauze! Come, my Sisters!" I can tell 
you I plundered him ! And my Sisters came with their aprons 
and the linen-baskets — we carried away all we could. 

Then she described the evacuation of the 
French wounded at night — 300 of them — all 
but the 19 worst cases left behind. There 
were no ambulances, no proper preparation of 
any kind. "Oh ! it was a confusion ! An ugly 
business ! (Ce n'etait pas rose !) The Sisters 
tore down and split up the shutters, the doors, 
to serve as stretchers; they tore sheets into 
long strips and tied 'our poor children' on to 
the shutters, and hoisted them into country 
carts of every sort and description. Quick! 
Quick ! " She gave us a wonderful sense of the 
despairing haste in which the night retreat had 
to be effected. All night their work went on. 
The wounded never made a sound. "They 
let us do what we would without a word. And 
as for us, my Sisters bound these big fellows 
(ces gros et grands messieurs) on to the impro- 
vised stretchers like a mother who fastens her 
child in its cot. Ah ! Jesus ! the poverty and 
the misery of that time ! . . . " 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 193 

By the early morning all the French wounded 
were gone except the 19 helpless cases, and all 
the French soldiers had cleared out of the vil- 
lage except the 57 Chasseurs, whose orders 
were to hold the place as long as they could, 
to cover the retreat of the rest. 

Then the Germans entered, expecting no 
resistance. But they were received with shots 
from the Chasseurs, and it took them hours to 
dislodge the little company, in the course of 
which they lost some men. 

Then, when the Chasseurs finally withdrew, 
the Bavarian troops rushed up the town in a 
state of furious excitement, burning it syste- 
matically as they advanced, and treating the 
inhabitants as M. Mirman has described. 
Soon Soeur Julie knew that they were coming 
up the hill towards the hospital. I will quote 
the very language — homely, Biblical, direct — 
in which she described her feelings. "Mes 
reins fiottaient comme ga — Us allaient tomber a 
mes talons. Instantanement, pas une goutte de 
salive dans la bouche /" Or to translate it in 
the weaker English idiom, "My heart went 
down into my heels — all in a moment, my 
mouth was dry as a bone !" 

The German officers drew up and asked for 
the Superior of the hospital. She went out to 



194 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

meet them. Here she tried to imitate the ex- 
traordinary arrogance of the German manner. 

"They told me they would have to burn the 
hospital, as they were informed men had been 
shooting from it at their troops." 

"I replied that if any one had been shooting 
it was the French Chasseurs, who were posted 
in a street close by, and had every right to 
shoot ! " At last they agreed to let the hospi- 
tal alone and burn no more houses, if she 
would take in the German wounded. So pres- 
ently the wards of the little hospital were full 
again to overflowing. But while the German 
wounded were coming in the German officers 
insisted on searching the 19 French wounded 
for arms. 

"I had to make way for them — I had to say, 
"Entrez, Messieurs I 9 ' 

Then she dropped her voice and said be- 
tween her teeth: " Think how hard that was 
for a Lorrainer !" 

So two German officers went to the ward 
where the 19 Frenchmen lay, all helpless cases, 
and a scene followed very like that in the hos- 
pital at Senlis. One drew his revolver and 
covered the beds, the other walked round, 
poniard in hand, throwing back the bed- 
clothes to look for arms. But they found 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 195 

nothing — "Only blood 1 For we had had 
neither time enough nor dressings enough to 
treat the wounds properly that night." 

A frightful moment — the cowering patients 
— the officers in a state of almost frenzied ex- 
citement, searching bed after bed. At the last 
bed, occupied by a badly wounded and quite 
helpless youth, the officer carrying the dagger 
brought the blade of it so near to the boy's 
throat that Sceur Julie rushed forward and 
placed her two hands in front of the poor bare 
neck. The officer dropped both arms to his 
sides, she said, "as if he had been shot," and 
stood staring at her, quivering all over. But 
from that moment she had conquered them. 

For the German wounded Sceur Julie de- 
clared she had done her best, and the officer in 
charge of them afterwards wrote her a letter 
of thanks. Then her mouth twisted a little. 
"But I wasn't — well, I didn't spoil them ! (Je 
rCetais pas trop tendre.) I didn't give them our 
best wine!" And one officer whose wounds 
she dressed, a Prussian colonel who never 
deigned to speak to a Bavarian captain near 
him, was obliged to accept a good many home 
truths from her. He was convinced that she 
would poison his leg unless he put on the dress- 
ings himself. But he allowed her to bandage 



196 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

him afterwards. During this operation — 
which she hinted she had performed in a rather 
Spartan fashion — "he whimpered all the time," 
and she was able to give him a good deal of 
her mind on the war and the behaviour of his 
troops. He and the others, she said, were 
always talking about their Kaiser — "one might 
have thought they saw him sitting on the 
clouds." 

In two or three days the French returned 
victorious, to find the burned and outraged 
village. The Germans were forced in their 
turn to leave some badly wounded men behind, 
and the French poilus, in their mingled wrath 
and exultation, could not resist, some of them, 
abusing the German wounded through the 
windows of the hospital. But then, with a 
keen dramatic instinct, Sceur Julie drew a 
striking picture of the contrast between the 
behaviour of the French officer going down to 
the basement to visit two wounded German 
officers there, and that of the German officers 
on a similar errand. She conveyed with per- 
fect success the cold civility of the Frenchman, 
beginning with a few scathing words about the 
treatment of the town, and then proceeding to 
an investigation of the personal effects of the 
Boche officers. 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 197 

"Your papers, gentlemen ? Ah ! Those are 
private letters — you may retain them. Your 
purses?" — he looks at them — "I hand them 
back to you. Your note-books ? Ah ! Ca — 
ga, cest mon affaire ! (That's my affair !) I 
wish you good morning." 

Sceur Julie spoke emphatically of the drunk- 
enness of the Germans. They discovered a 
store of "Mirabelle," a strong liqueur, in the 
town, and had soon exhausted it, with appar- 
ently the worst results. 

Well ! The March afternoon ran on, and 
we could have sat there listening till dusk. 
But our French officers were growing a little 
impatient, and one of them gently drew "the 
dear Sister," as every one calls her, towards 
the end of her tale. Then with regret one left 
the plain parlour, the little hospital which had 
played so big a part, and the brave elderly 
nun, in whom one seemed to see again some of 
those qualities which, springing from the very 
soil of Lorraine, "and in the heart of a woman," 
had once, long years ago, saved France. 

How much there would be still to say 
about the charm and the kindness of Lorraine, 
if only this letter were not already too long ! 
But after the tragedy of Gerbeviller I must 



198 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

at any rate find room for the victory of 
Amance. 

Alas ! the morning was dull and misty when 
we left Nancy for Amance and the Grand 
Couronne; so that when we stood at last on 
the famous ridge immediately north of the 
town, which saw, on September 8th, 1914, the 
wrecking of the final German attempt on 
Nancy, there was not much visible except the 
dim lines of forest and river in the plain below. 
Our view ought to have ranged as far, almost, 
as Metz to the north and the Vosges to the 
south. But at any rate there at our feet lay 
the Forest of Champenoux, which was the 
scene of the three frantic attempts of the Ger- 
mans debouching from it on September 8th, to 
capture the hill of Amance, and the plateau 
on which we stood. Again and again the 75's 
on the hill mowed down the advancing hordes, 
and the heavy guns behind completed their 
work. The Germans broke and fled, never to 
return. Nancy was saved, the right of the 
six French Armies advancing across France at 
that very moment on the heels of the retreat- 
ing Germans in the battle of the Marne was 
protected thereby from a flank attack which 
might have altered all the fortunes of the war, 
and the course of history, and General Cas- 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 199 

telnau had written his name on the memory of 
Europe. 

But — the Kaiser was not there! Even 
Colonel Buchan, in his admirable History of 
the War, and Major Whitton, in his recent 
book on the campaign of the Marne, repeat 
the current legend. I can only bear witness 
that the two French staff-officers who walked 
with us along the Grand Couronne — one of 
whom had been in the battle of September 8th 
— were positive that the Kaiser was not in the 
neighbourhood at the time, and that there 
was no truth at all in the famous story which 
describes him as watching the battle from the 
edge of the Forest of Champenoux, and riding 
off ahead of his defeated troops, instead of 
making, as he had reckoned, a triumphant 
entry into Nancy. Well, it is a pity the gods 
did not order it so! — "to be a tale for those 
that should come after." 

One more incident before we leave Lorraine ! 
On our way up to the high village of Amance 
we had passed some three or four hundred 
French soldiers at work. They looked with 
wide eyes of astonishment at the two ladies in 
the military car. When we reached the vil- 
lage Prince R , the young staff-officer from 

a neighbouring Headquarters who was to meet 



200 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

us there, had not arrived, and we spent some 
time in a cottage, chatting with the women 
who lived in it. Then — apparently — while we 
were on the ridge, word reached the men work- 
ing below from the village that we were Eng- 
lish. And on the drive down we found them 
gathered, three or four hundred, beside the 
road, and as we passed them they cheered 
heartily, seeing in us, for the moment, the 
English alliance ! 

So that we left the Grand Couronne with 
wet eyes and hearts all passionate sympathy 
towards Lorraine and her people. 



X 

June 1st, 1917. 

Dear Mr. Roosevelt, 

In looking back over my two preceding 
letters, I realise how inadequately they ex- 
press the hundredth part of that vast and 
insoluble debt of a guilty Germany to an in- 
jured France, realisation of which became — 
for me — in Lorraine, on the Ourcq, and in 
Artois, a burning and overmastering thing, 
from which I was rarely or never free. And 
since I returned to England, the conduct of 
the German troops, under the express orders of 
the German Higher Command, in the French 
districts evacuated since February by Hin- 
denburg's retreating forces, has only sharp- 
ened and deepened the judgment of civilised 
men, with regard to the fighting German and 
all his ways, which has been formed long 
since, beyond alteration or recall. 

Think of it ! It cries to heaven. Think of 
Reims and Arras, of Verdun and Ypres, think 
of the hundreds of towns and villages, the 
thousands of individual houses and farms, 

201 



202 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

that lie ruined on the old soil of France; think 
of the sufferings of the helpless and the old, 
the hideous loss of life, of stored-up wealth, of 
natural and artistic beauty; and then let us 
ask ourselves again the old, old question — 
why has this happened? And let us go back 
again to the root facts, from which, whenever 
he or she considers them afresh — and they 
should be constantly considered afresh — every 
citizen of the allied nations can only draw 
fresh courage to endure. 

The long and passionate preparation for 
war in Germany; the half -mad literature of 
a glorified "force" headed by the Bernhardis 
and Treitschkes, and repeated by a thousand 
smaller folk, before the war; the far more 
illuminating manifestoes of the intellectuals 
since the war; Germany's refusal of a con- 
ference, as proposed and pressed by Great Brit- 
ain, in the week before August 4th; France's 
acceptance of it; Germany's refusal to re- 
spect the Belgian neutrality to which she had 
signed her name, France's immediate consent; 
the provisions of mercy and of humanity 
signed by Germany in the Hague Conven- 
tion trampled, almost with a sneer, underfoot; 
the jubilation over the Lusitania, and the 
arrogant defence of all that has been most 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 203 

cruel and most criminal in the war, as neces- 
sary to Germany's interests, and therefore 
moral, therefore justified; let none — none! — 
of these things rest forgotten in our minds 
until peace is here and justice done ! 

The German armies are capable of "no un- 
disciplined cruelty," said the ninety-three pro- 
fessors, without seeing how damning was the 
phrase. No! — theirs was a cruelty by order, 
meditated, organised, and deliberate. The sto- 
ries of Senlis, of Vareddes, of Gerbeviller which 
I have specially chosen, as free from that 
element of sexual horror which repels many 
sensitive people from even trying to realise 
what has happened in this war, are evidences 
— one must insist again — of a national mind 
and quality, with which civilised Europe and 
civilised America can make no truce. And 
what folly lies behind the wickedness ! Let 
me T recall to American readers some of the 
phrases in the report of your former Minister 
in Belgium — Mr. Brand Whitlock — on the 
Belgian deportations, the "slave hunts" that 
Germany has carried out in Belgium and 
"which have torn from nearly every humble 
home in the land, a husband, father, son, or 
brother.' ' 

"These proceedings," says Mr. Whitlock, 



204 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

"place in relief the German capacity for blun- 
dering almost as sharply as the German ca- 
pacity for cruelty. They have destroyed 
for generations any hope whatever of friendly 
relations between themselves and the Bel- 
gian people. For these things were done not, 
as with the early atrocities, in the heat of 
passion and the first lust of war, but by one 
of those deeds that make one despair of the 
future of the human race — a deed coldly 
planned, studiously matured, and deliberately 
and systematically executed, a deed so cruel 
that German soldiers are said to have wept 
in its execution, and so monstrous that even 
German officers are now said to be ashamed." 
But the average German neither weeps 
nor blames. He is generally amazed, when he 
is not amused, by the state of feeling which 
such proceedings excite. And if he is an "in- 
tellectual," a professor, he will exhaust himself 
in ingenious and utterly callous defences of 
all that Germany has done or may do. An 
astonishing race — the German professors ! The 
year before the war there was an historical 
congress in London. There was a hospitality 
committee, and my husband and I were asked 
to entertain some of the learned men. I re- 
member one in particular — an old man with 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 205 

white hair, who with his wife and daughter 
joined the party after dinner. His name was 
Professor Otto von Gierke of the University 
of Berlin. I gathered from his conversation 
that he and his family had been very kindly 
entertained in London. His manner was 
somewhat harsh and overbearing, but his 
white hair and spectacles gave him a ven- 
erable aspect, and it was clear that he and his 
wife and daughter belonged to a cultivated and 
intelligent milieu. 

But who among his English hosts could 
possibly have imagined the thoughts and 
ideas in that grey head? I find a speech of 
his in a most illuminating book by a Danish 
professor on German Chauvinist literature.* 
The speech was published in a collection 
called German Speeches in Hard Times, which 
contains names once so distinguished as those 
of von Willamovitz and Harnack. Professor 
von Gierke's effusion begins with the usual 
falsehoods as to the origin of the war, and then 
continues : 

"But now that we Germans are plunged in 
war, we will have it in all its grandeur and vio- 
lence I Neither fear nor pity shall stay our 

* Hurrah and Hallelujah I by J. P. Bang, D.D., Professor of The- 
ology at the University of Copenhagen, translated by Jesse Brochner. 



206 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

arm before it has completely brought our 
enemies to the ground." They shall be re- 
duced to such a condition that they shall never 
again dare even to snarl at Germany. Then 
German Kultur will show its full loveliness 
and strength, enlightening "the understanding 
of the foreign races absorbed and incorporated 
into the Empire, and making them see that 
only from German Kultur can they derive 
those treasures which they need for their own 
particular life." 

At the moment when these lines were 
written, for the book was published early in 
the war, the orgy of murder and lust and 
hideous brutality which had swept through 
Belgium in the first three weeks of the war 
was beginning to be known in England; the 
traces of it were still fresh in town after town, 
and village after village of that tortured land; 
while the testimony of its victims was just 
beginning to be sifted by the experts of the 
Bryce Commission. 

The hostages of Vareddes, the helpless 
victims of Nomeny, of Gerbeviller, of Ser- 
maize, of Sommeilles, and a score of other 
places were scarcely cold in their graves. 
But the old white-haired professor stands 
there, unashamed, unctuously offering the 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 207 

Kultur of his criminal nation to an expectant 
world! "And when the victory is won," he 
says complacently — "the whole world will 
stand open to us, our war expenses will be 
paid by the vanquished, the black- white- 
and-red flag will wave over all seas; our coun- 
trymen will hold highly respected posts in 
all parts of the world, and we shall maintain 
and extend our colonies." 

God forbid ! So says the whole English- 
speaking race, you on your side of the sea, 
and we on ours. 

But the feeling of abhorrence which is not, 
at such a moment as this, sternly and inces- 
santly translated into deeds, is of no account ! 
So let me return to a last survey of the War. 
On my home journey from Nancy, I passed 
through Paris, and was again welcomed at 
G. H. Q. on my way to Boulogne. In Paris, 
the breathless news of the Germans' quick- 
ening retreat on the Somme and the Aisne 
was varied one morning by the welcome tid- 
ings of the capture of Bagdad; and at the 
house of one of the most distinguished of Eu- 
ropean publicists, M. Joseph Reinach, of the 
Figaro, I met, on our passage through, the 
lively, vigorous man, with his look of Irish 
vivacity and force — M. Painleve — who only 



208 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

a few days later was to succeed General Lyau- 
tey, as French Minister for War. 

At our own Headquarters, I found opinion 
as quietly confident as before. We were on 
the point of entering Bapaume; the "push- 
ing up" was going extraordinarily well, ow- 
ing to the excellence of the staff-work, and 
the energy and efficiency of all the auxiliary 
services — the Engineers, and the Labour 
Battalions, all the makers of roads and 
railways, the builders of huts, and levellers 
of shell-broken ground. And the vital im- 
portance of the long struggle on the Somme 
was becoming every day more evident. Only 
about Russia, both in Paris and at G. H. Q., 
was there a kind of silence which meant great 
anxiety. Lord Milner and General Castel- 
nau had returned from Petrograd. In Paris, 
at any rate, it was not believed that they 
brought good news. All the huge efforts of 
the Allies to supply Russia with money, muni- 
tions, and transport, were they to go for noth- 
ing, owing to some sinister and thwarting in- 
fluence which seemed to be strangling the 
national life? 

Then a few days after my return hQme 
the great explosion came and, when the first 
tumult and dust of it cleared away, there, 
indeed, was a strangely altered Europe ! From 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 209 

France, Great Britain, and America went up 
a great cry of sympathy, of congratulation. 
The Tsardom was gone! — the "dark forces" 
had been overthrown; the political exiles were 
free, and Freedom seemed to stand there on 
the Russian soil shading her bewildered eyes 
against the sun of victory, amazed at her own 
deed. 

But ten weeks have passed since then, and 
it would be useless to disguise that the outburst 
of warm and sincere rejoicing that greeted 
the overthrow of the Russian autocracy has 
passed once more into anxiety. Is Russia 
going to count any more in this great struggle 
for a liberated Europe, or will the forces of 
revolution devour each other, till in the course 
of time, the fated "saviour of society" ap- 
pears, and old tyrannies come back? General 
Smuts, himself the hero of a national struggle 
which has ended happily for both sides and 
the world, has been giving admirable ex- 
pression here to the thoughts of many hearts. 
First of all to the emotion with which all 
lovers of liberty have seen the all but blood- 
less fall of the old tyranny. He says: 

It might have taken another fifty years or a century of 
tragedy and suffering to have brought it about! But the 
enormous strain of this war has done it, and the Russian people 
stand free in their own house. 



210 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

Now, what will they do with their freedom ? 
Ten weeks have passed, and the Russian 
armies are still disorganised, the Russian 
future uncertain. Meanwhile, Germany has 
been able to throw against the Allies in France, 
and Austria has been able to throw against 
Italy on the Isonzo, forces which they think 
they need no longer against Russia, and the 
pace of victory has thereby been slackened. 
But General Smuts makes his eloquent appeal 
to the Russia which once held and broke Na- 
poleon: 

Liberty is like young wine — it mounts to your head some- 
times; and liberty, as a force in the world, requires organisa- 
tion and discipline. . . . There must be organisation, and 
there must be discipline. . . . The Russian people are . . . learn- 
ing to-day the greatest lesson of life — that to be free you must 
work very hard and struggle very hard. They have the sen- 
sation of freedom, now that their bonds and shackles are gone, 
and no doubt they feel the joy, the intoxication, of their new 
experience; but they are living in a world which is not gov- 
erned by formulas, however cleverly devised, but in a world 
of brute force, and unless that is smashed even liberty itself 
will suffer and cannot live. 

Will the newly freed forget those that are 
still suffering and bound? Will Russia forget 
Belgium?— and forget Serbia? 

Serbia was the reason why we went to war. She was going 
to be crushed under the Austrian heel, and Russia said this 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 211 

shall not be allowed. Serbia has in that way become the oc- 
casion probably of the greatest movement for freedom the 
world has ever seen. Are we going to forget Serbia ? No ! 
We must stand by those martyr peoples who have stood by 
the great forces of the world. If the great democracies of the 
world become tired, if they become faint, if they halt by the 
way, if they leave those little ones in the lurch, then they shall 
pay for it in wars more horrible than human mind can fore- 
see. I am sure we shall stand by those little ones. They have 
gone under, but we have not gone under. England and Amer- 
ica, France and Russia, have not go'ne under, and we shall 
see them through, and shame on us if ever the least thought 
enters our minds of not seeing them through. 

Noble and sincere words ! One can but 
hope that the echoes of them may reach the 
ear and heart of Russia. 

But if towards Russia, the sky that seemed 
to have cleared so suddenly is at present 
clouded and obscure — "westward, look, the 
land is bright!" 

A fortnight after the abdication of the 
Tsar, Congress met in Washington, and Presi- 
dent Wilson's speech announcing war be- 
tween Germany and America had rung through 
the world. All that you, Sir, the constant 
friend and champion of the Allies, and still 
more of their cause, and all that those who 
feel with you in the States have hoped for so 
long is now to be fulfilled. It may take some 
time for your country, across those thousands 



212 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

of miles of sea, to realise the war, to feel it in 
every nerve as we do. But in these first seven 
weeks — how much you have done, as well as 
said ! You have welcomed the British Mis- 
sion in a way to warm our British hearts; you 
have shown the French Mission how passion- 
ately America feels for France. You have 
lent us American destroyers, which have al- 
ready played their part in a substantial re- 
duction of the submarine losses. You have 
lent the Allies 150,000,000 sterling. You have 
passed a bill which will ultimately give you 
an army of 2,000,000 men. You are raising 
such troops as will immediately increase the 
number of Americans in France to 100,000 — 
equalling five German divisions. You are 
sending 10,000 doctors to England and France, 
and hundreds of them have already arrived. 
You have doubled the personnel of your Navy, 
and increased your Regular Army by nearly 
180,000 men. You are constructing 3,500 
aeroplanes, and training 6,000 airmen, and 
you are now talking of 100,000 aeroplanes! 
Not bad for seven weeks ! 

For the Allies also those weeks have been 
full of achievement. On Easter Monday, 
April 9th, the battle of Arras began, with the 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 213 

brilliant capture by the Canadians of that 
very Vimy ridge I had seen on March 2d, 
from the plateau of Notre Dame de Lorette, 
lying in the middle distance under the spring 
sunshine. That exposed hillside — those bat- 
teries through which I had walked — those 
crowded roads and travelling guns, those 
marching troops and piled ammunition dumps: 
how the recollection of them gave accent and 
fire to the picture of the battle as the tele- 
grams from the front built it up day by day 
before one's eyes ! 

Week by week, afterwards with a mastery 
in artillery and in aviation that nothing could 
withstand, the British Army pushed on through 
April. After the first great attack which 
gave us the Vimy ridge and brought our 
line close to Lens in the north, and to the 
neighbourhood of Bullecourt in the south the 
23d of April saw the second British ad- 
vance, which gave us Gavrelle and Guemappe, 
and made further breaches in the Hinden- 
burg line. On April 16th, the French made 
their magnificent attack in Champagne, with 
10,000 prisoners on the first day (increased 
to 31,000 by the 24th of May)— followed by 
the capture of the immensely important posi- 
tions of Moronvillers and Craonne. Alto- 



214 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

gether the Allies in little more than a month 
took 50,000 prisoners and large numbers of 
guns. General Allenby, for instance, cap- 
tured one hundred and fifty guns, General 
Home sixty-four, while General Byng formed 
three "Pan-Germanic groups" out of his. 
We recovered many square miles of the robbed 
territory of France — forty villages one day — 
one hundred villages another; while the con- 
dition in which the Germans had left both 
the recovered territory and its inhabitants 
has steeled once more the determination of 
the nations at war with Germany to put an 
end to "this particular form of ill-doing on the 
part of an uncivilised race." 

During May, there has been no such strik- 
ing advance on either the French or British 
fronts, though Roeux and Bullecourt, both 
very important points, from their bearing on 
the Drocourt-Queant line, behind which lie 
Douai and Cambrai, have been captured 
by the British, and the French have con- 
tinuously bettered their line and defied the 
most desperate counter-attacks. But May 
has been specially Italy's month ! The Italian 
offensive on the Isonzo and the Carso, be- 
ginning on May 14th, has in ten days achieved 
more than any onlooker had dared to hope. 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 215 

In the section between Tolmino and Gorizia, 
where the Isonzo runs in a fine gorge, the west- 
ern bank belonging to Italy, and the eastern 
to Austria, all the important heights on the 
eastern bank across the river, except one that 
may fall to them any day, have been carried 
by the superb fighting of the Italians, amongst 
whom Dante's fellow citizens, the Florentine 
regiment, and regiments drawn from the rich 
Tuscan hills, have specially distinguished them- 
selves. 

While on the Carso, that rock-wilderness 
which stretches between Gorizia and Trieste, 
where fighting, especially in hot weather, 
supplies a supreme test of human endurance, 
the Italians have pushed on and on, from 
point to point, till now they are within ten 
miles of Trieste. British artillery is with the 
Italian Army, and British guns have been 
shelling military quarters and stores in the 
outskirts of Trieste, while British monitors 
are co-operating at sea. The end is not yet, 
for the Austrians will fight to their last man 
for Trieste; but the omens are all good, and 
the Italian nation is more solidly behind its 
army than ever before. 

So that, in spite of the apparent lull in the 
allied offensive on the French front during the 



216 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

later weeks of May, all has really been going 
well. The only result of the furious German 
attempts to recover the ground lost in April 
has been to exhaust the strength of the at- 
tackers; and the allied cause is steadily prof- 
ited thereby. Our own troops have never 
been more sure of final victory. Let me quote 
a soldier's graphic letter, printed recently in 
the Morning Post : 

This breakaway from trench war gives us a much better 
time. We know now that we are the top dogs, and that we 
are keeping the Germans on the move. And they're busy 
wondering all the time; they don't know where the next whack 
is coming from. Mind you, I'm far from saying that we can get 
them out of the Hindenburg line without a lot of fighting yet, 
but it is only a question of time. It's a different sensation 
going over the top now from what it was in the early days. 
You see, we used to know that our guns were not nearly so 
many as the Germans, and that we hadn't the stuff to put 
over. Now we just climb out of a trench and walk behind 
a curtain of fire. It makes a difference. It seems to me we 
are steadily beating the Boche at his own game. He used to 
be strong in the matter of guns, but that's been taken from 
him. He used gas — do you remember the way the Canadians 
got the first lot ? Well, now our gas shells are a bit too strong 
for him, and so are our flame shells. I bet he wishes now that 
he hadn't thought of his flame-throwers ! . . . Then, there's 
another thing, and that's the way our chaps keep improving. 
The Fritzes are not so good as they used to be. You get up 
against a bunch now and again that fight well, but we begin 
to see more of the Kamerad business. It's as much up to the 
people at home to see this thing through, as it is to the men out 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 217 

here. We need the guns and shells to blow the Germans out 
of the strong places that they've had years to build and dig, 
and the folks at home can leave the rest to us. We can do the 
job all right, if they back us up and don't get tired. I think 
we've shown them that too. You'll get all that from the pa- 
pers, but maybe it comes better from a soldier. You can take it 
from me that it's true. I've seen the beginning, and I've been 
in places where things were pretty desperate for us, and I've 
seen the start of the finish. The difference is marvellous. I've 
only had an Army education, and it might strike you that 
I'm not able to judge. I'm a soldier though, and I look at it 
as a soldier. I say, give us the stuff, keep on giving us the 
tools, and the men to use them, and — it may be soon or it 
may be long — we'll beat the Boche to his knees. 

The truth seems to be that the Germans 
are outmatched, first and foremost in air- 
craft and in guns. You will remember the 
quiet certainty of our young Flight-Com- 
mander on the 1st of March. 

"When the next big offensive comes, we 
shall down them, just as we did on the Somme," 
he said. The prophecy has been made good, 
abundantly good ! — at the cost of many a 
precious life. The air observation on our side 
has been far better and more daring than that 
on the German side; and the work of our 
artillery has been proportionately more ac- 
curate and more effective. 

As to guns and ammunition, "The number 
of heavy shells fired in the first week of the 



218 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

present offensive" — says an official account — 
"was nearly twice as great as it was in the 
first week of the Somme offensive, and in the 
second week it was six and one-half times as 
great as it was in the second week of the 
Somme offensive. As a result of this great 
artillery fire, which had never been exceeded 
in the whole course of the war, a great saving 
of British life has been effected." And no 
praise can be too high for our gunners. In 
a field where, two years ago, Germany had 
the undisputed predominance, we had now 
beaten her alike in the supply of guns and in 
the daring and efficiency of our gunners. 

Nevertheless, let there be no foolish under- 
estimate of the still formidable strength of 
the Germans. The British and French Mis- 
sions will have brought to your Government 
all available information on this point. There 
can be no doubt that a "wonderful" effort, 
as one of our Ministers calls it, has been made 
by Germany during the past winter. She 
has mobilised all her people for the war as 
she had never done yet. She has increased 
her munitions and put fresh divisions in the 
field. The estimates of her present fighting 
strength, given by our military writers and 
correspondents, do not differ very much. 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 219 

Colonel Repington in the Times, puts the 
German fighting men on both fronts at 4,500,- 
000, with 500,000 on the lines of communica- 
tion, and a million in the German depots. 
Mr. Belloc's estimate is somewhat less, but 
not materially different. Both writers agree 
that we are now in the presence of Ger- 
many's last and greatest effort, that she has 
no more behind and that if the Allies go on 
as they have begun — and now — with the help 
of America ! this summer should witness the 
fulfilment, at least, of that forecast which I 
reported to you in my earlier letters as so 
general among the chiefs of our Army in 
France — i. e., "this year will see the war de- 
cided, but may not see it ended." Since I 
came home, indeed, more optimistic prophecies 
have reached me from France. For some 
weeks after the American declaration of war 
— "We shall be home by Christmas!" was 
the common cry — and amongst some of the 
best informed. 

But the Russian situation, and the sub- 
marine losses — up to a week or two ago — 
have to a certain small extent chastened the 
expectations of April. And it is clear that 
during April and early May, under the stim- 
ulus of the submarine successes, German 



220 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

hopes temporarily revived. Never have the 
Junkers been more truculent, never have the 
Pan-Germans talked wilder nonsense about 
"annexation" and "indemnities." Until quite 
recently, at any rate, the whole German nation 
— except no doubt a cautious and intelligent 
few at the real sources of information — be- 
lieved that the submarine campaign would 
soon "bring England to her knees." They 
were so confident, that they ran the last 
great risk — they brought America into the 
war! 

How does it look now? The situation is 
still critical and dangerous. But I recall the 
half-smiling prophecy of one of my naval 
hosts, in the middle of March, as we stood 
together on the deck of his ship, looking over 
his curtseying and newly hatched flock of 
destroyers gathered round him in harbour. 
Was it not, perhaps, as near the mark as that 
of our airmen hosts on March 1st has proved 
itself to be? "Have patience and you'll see 
great things! The situation is serious, but 
quite healthy." Two months, and a little 
more, since the words were spoken; and week 
by week, heavy as they still are, the toll of 
submarine loss goes down, and your Navy, 
at work with ours, — most fitting and welcome 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 221 

Nemesis! — is helping England to punish and 
baffle the "uncivilised people," who, if they 
had their way, would blacken and defile for 
ever the old and glorious record of man upon 
the sea. 

You, who store such things in your enviable 
memory, will recollect how in the Odyssey, 
that kindly race of singers and wrestlers, the 
Phseacians, are the escorts and convoyers of 
all who need and ask for protection at sea? 
They keep the waterways for civilised men, 
against pirates and assassins, as your nation 
and ours mean to keep them in the future. 
It is true that a treacherous sea-god, jealous 
of any interference with his right to slay and 
drown at will, smote the gallant ship that bore 
Odysseus safely home, on her return, and 
made a rock of her for ever. Poseidon may 
stand for the Kaiser of the story. He is gone, 
however, with all his kin. But the humane 
and civilising tradition of the sea, which this 
legend carries back into the dawn of time — it 
shall be for the Allies — shall it not? — in this 
war, to rescue it, once and for ever, from the 
criminal violence which would stain the free 
paths of ocean with the murder and sudden 
death of those who have been in all history 
the objects of men's compassion and care — 



ZM TOWARDS THE GOAL 

the wounded, the helpless, the woman, and 
the child. 

For the rest, let me gather up a few last 
threads of this second instalment of our British 
story. 

Of that vast section of the war concerned 
with the care and transport of the wounded, 
and the health of the Army, it is not my 
purpose to speak at length in these letters. 
Like everything else it has been steadily and 
eagerly perfected during the past year. Never 
have the wounded in battle, in any war, been 
so tenderly and skilfully cared for; — never 
have such intelligence and good-will been ap- 
plied to the health conditions of such huge 
masses of men. Nor is it necessary to dwell 
again, as I did last year, on the wonderful 
work of women in the war. It has grown in 
complexity and bulk; women-workers in mu- 
nitions are now nearly a fifth of the whole 
body; but essentially the general aspect of it 
has not changed much in the last twelve 
months. 

But what has changed is the food situation, 
owing partly to submarine attack, and partly 
to the general shortage in the food-supply of 
the world. In one of my earlier letters I 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 223 

spoke with anxiety of the still unsettled ques- 
tion — Will the housewives and mothers of the 
nation realise — in time — our food necessities? 
Will their thrift-work in the homes complete 
the munition-work of women in the factories ? 
Or must we submit to the ration-system, with 
all its cumbrous inequalities, and its hosts of 
officials; because the will and intelligence of 
our people, which have risen so remarkably to 
the other tasks of this war, are not equal to 
the task of checking food consumption with- 
out compulsion? 

It looks now as though they would be equal. 
Since my earlier letter the country has been 
more and more generally covered with the 
National War Savings Committees which have 
been carrying into food-economy the energy 
they spent originally on the raising of the last 
great War Loan. The consumption of bread 
and flour throughout the country has gone 
down — not yet sufficiently — but enough to 
show that the idea has taken hold: — "Save 
bread, and help victory!" And since your 
declaration of war it strengthens our own 
effort to know that America with her bound- 
less food-supplies is standing by, and that her 
man- and sea- power are now to be com- 
bined with ours in defeating the last effort of 



ZU TOWARDS THE GOAL 

Germany to secure by submarine piracy what 
she cannot win on the battle-field. 

Meanwhile changes which will have far- 
reaching consequences after the war are taking 
place in our own home food-supply. The long 
neglect of our home agriculture, the slow and 
painful dwindling of our country populations, 
are to come to an end. The Government calls 
for the sowing of three million additional acres 
of corn in Great Britain; and throughout the 
country the steam-tractors are at work plough- 
ing up land which has either never borne 
wheat, or which has ceased to bear it for 
nearly a century. Thirty-five thousand acres 
of wheat land are to be added to the national 
store in this county of Hertfordshire alone. 
The wages of agricultural labourers have risen 
by more than one-third. The farmers are to 
be protected and encouraged as they never 
have been since the Cobdenite revolution; 
and the Corn Production Bill now passing 
through Parliament shows what the grim les- 
son of this war has done to change the old 
and easy optimism of our people. 

As to the energy that has been thrown into 
other means of food-supply, let the potatoes 
now growing in the flower-beds in front of 
Buckingham Palace stand for a symbol of it! 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 225 

The potato crop of this year — barring accidents 
— will be enormous; and the whole life of our 
country villages has been quickened by the 
effort that has been made to increase the 
produce of the cottage gardens and allotments. 
The pride and pleasure of the women and the 
old men in what they have been able to do at 
home, while their sons and husbands are 
fighting at the front, is moving to see. Food 
prices are very high; life in spite of increased 
wages is hard. But the heart of England is set 
on winning this war; and the letters which 
pass between the fathers and mothers in this 
village where I live, and the sons at the front, 
in whom they take a daily and hourly pride, 
would not give Germany much comfort could 
she read them. I take this little scene, as an illus- 
tration, fresh from the life of my own village: 
Imagine a visitor on behalf of the food- 
economy movement endeavouring to persuade 
a village mother to come to some cookery 
lessons organised by the local committee. 
Mrs. S. is discovered sitting at a table on 
which are preparations for a meal. She re- 
ceives the visitor and the visitor's remarks 
with an air — quite unconscious — of tragic medi- 
tation; and her honest labour-stained hand 
sweeps over the things on the table. 



226 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

"Cheese!" — she says, at last — "eightpence 
the 'arf pound!" 

A pause. The hand points in another direc- 
tion. 

"Lard — sevenpence — that scrubby little 
piece ! Sugar I sixpence Vpenny the pound. 
The best part of two shillin's gone ! Whatever 
are we comin' to ? " 

Gloom descends on the little kitchen. The 
visitor is at a loss — when suddenly the round, 
motherly face changes. — "But there now ! I'm 
goin' to smile, whatever 'appens. I'm not 
one as is goin' to give in ! And we 'ad a letter 
from Arthur [her son in the trenches] this 
morning, to say 'is Company's on the list for 
leave, and 'e's applied. — Oh, dear Miss, just 
to think of it ! " 

Then with a catch in her voice: 

"But it's not the comin' home, Miss — it's 
the goin 9 back again t Yes, I'll come to the 
cookin', Miss, if I possibly can!" 

There's the spirit of our country folk — 
patriotic, patient, true. 

As to labour conditions generally. I spoke, 
perhaps, in my first letter rather too confi- 
dently for the moment of the labour situation. 
There has been one serious strike among the 
engineers since I began to write, and a good 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 227 

many minor troubles. But neither the Tyne 
nor the Clyde was involved, and though valu- 
able time was lost, in the end the men were 
brought back to work quite as much by the 
pressure of public opinion among their own 
comrades, men and women, as by any Govern- 
ment action. The Government have since 
taken an important step from which much is 
hoped, by dividing up the country into dis- 
tricts and appointing local commissioners to 
watch over and, if they can, remove the causes 
of "unrest" — causes which are often connected 
with the inevitable friction of a colossal trans- 
formation, and sometimes with the sheer 
fatigue of the workers, whose achievement — 
munition-workers, shipwrights, engineers — 
during these three years has been nothing 
short of marvellous. 

As to finance, the colossal figures of last 
year, of which I gave a summary in England's 
Effort have been much surpassed. The Budget 
of Great Britain for this year, including ad- 
vances to our allies, reaches the astounding 
figure of 2,000,300,000 sterling. Our war ex- 
penditure is now close upon 6,000,000 sterling 
a day (£5,600,000). Of this, the expenditure 
on the Army and Navy and Munitions has 
risen from a daily average of nearly 3,000,000 



228 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

sterling, as it stood last year, to a daily average 
of nearly 5,000,000. 

But the nation has not spent in vain ! 

"Compare the first twenty -four days of 
the fighting on the Somme last year" — said 
Mr. Bonar Law in a recent speech — "with 
the first twenty-four days of the operations 
of this spring. Four times as much territory 
had been taken from the enemy in this of- 
fensive, as was taken in the Somme, against 
the resistance of double the number of Ger- 
man divisions. And of those divisions just 
one-half have had to be withdrawn — shattered 
— from the fighting-line while the British 
casualties in the offensive have been from 
fifty to seventy-five per cent less than the 
casualties in the Somme fighting." Consider, 
too, the news which is still fresh as I finish this 
letter — (June 11th)— of the victory of Mes- 
sines; perhaps the most complete, the most 
rounded success — so far — that has fallen to 
the British armies in the war ! Last year, in 
three months' fighting on the Somme, we took 
the strongly fortified Albert ridge, and forced 
the German retreat of last February. On 
April 8th of this year began the battle of Arras, 
which gave us the Vimy ridge, and a free out- 
look over the Douai plain. And finally, on 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 229 

June 7th, four days ago, the Messines ridge, 
which I saw last year on March 2d — appar- 
ently impregnable and inaccessible ! — from a 
neighbouring hill, with the German trenches 
scored along its slopes, was captured by Gen- 
eral Plumer and his splendid army in a few 
hours, after more than twelve months' prepara- 
tion, with lighter casualties than have ever 
fallen to a British attack before, and with 
heavy losses to the enemy; large captures of 
guns, and 7,000 prisoners. Our troops have 
since moved steadily forward; and the strategic 
future is rich in possibilities. The Germans 
have regained nothing; and the German press 
has not yet dared to tell the German people of 
the defeat. Let us remember also the victori- 
ous campaign of this year in Mesopotamia — 
and the welcome stroke of the past week in 
Greece, by which King "Tino" has been at 
last dismissed, and the Liberal forces of the 
Greek nation set free. 

Aye, we do consider — we do remember — 
these things! We feel that the goal is draw- 
ing slowly but steadily nearer, that ultimate 
victory is certain, and with victory the dawn 
of a better day for Europe. But who, least 
of all a woman, can part from the tragic 



230 TOWARDS THE GOAL 

spectacle of this war without bitterness of 
spirit ! 

"Who will give us back our children?" 
Wickedness and wrong will . find their 
punishment, and the dark Hours now passing, 
in the torch-race of time will hand the light 
on to Hours of healing and of peace. But 
the dead return not. It is they whose ap- 
pealing voices seem to be in the air to-day, 
as we think of America. 

Among the Celts of ancient Brittany there 
was a belief which still survives in the tradi- 
tions of the Breton peasants and in the name 
of part of the Breton coast. Every All Souls' 
night, says a story at least as old as the sixth 
century, the souls of the dead gather on the 
cliffs of Brittany, above that bay which is 
still called the "Bai des Trepasses," waiting 
for their departure across the ocean to a far 
region of the west, where the gods sit for 
judgment, and the good find peace. On that 
night, the fishermen hear at midnight myste- 
rious knockings at their doors. They go down 
to the water's edge, and behold, there are 
boats unknown to them, with no visible pas- 
sengers. But the fishermen take the oars, 
and though they see nothing they feel the 
presence of the souls crowding into the boats, 



TOWARDS THE GOAL 231 

and they row, on and on, into the west, past 
the furthest point of any land they know. 
Suddenly, they feel the boats lightened of 
all that weight of spirits, and the souls are 
gone — streaming out with plaintive cries and 
longing into the wide illimitable ocean of the 
west, in search of a welcome on some invisible 
shore. 

So now the call of those hundreds of thou- 
sands who have given their young lives — so 
beloved, so rich in promise ! — for their coun- 
try and the freedom of men, is in your ears 
and ours. The dead are witnesses of the 
compact between you and us. For that cause 
to which they brought their ungrudged sacri- 
fice has now laid its resistless claim on you. 
Together, the free peoples of Europe and 
America have now to carry it to victory — 
victory, just, necessary, and final. 

Mary A. Ward. 



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